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I was born in Birmingham in the 50’s and grew up in that wonderfully transient period of the sixties when the old values were turned on their heads. I suppose I was a product of the flower power revolution, something which has stayed with me. I was brought up in a house where electric's and audio equipment were the norm, by the time I left junior school I could mix and edit tapes. By the time I was sixteen the world was calling and I had itchy feet. The 70’s The turning point came when I was posted to an RAF base near Ipswich which had its own cable network called WFN (Wattisham Forces Network), OK so it didn’t have a vast number of listeners but id did have a very professional attitude and all the equipment a young DJ needed to cut his teeth on. In fact I was not the only Caroline DJ to learn the trade there; Brian Martin was one of the guys at WFN and followed me out to the Mi Amigo. The great thing about the station was the fact that it gave you the opportunity to develop your skills in all areas as the station was completely self supporting, as well as being a DJ at various times I was also the program controller and the station engineer. The station being where it was meant the offshore stations were our main source of inspiration and we even relayed them at times over the cable system, it was during that time that offshore radio must have seeped into my bloodstream! After leaving the RAF during the long hot summer of 1976 I moved back to Birmingham and was staying at my parent’s house. I had decided radio was the thing for me in my civilian career and it had to be offshore radio as the BBC and upcoming ILR stations seemed to totally lack any sense of adventure in Comparison.
I received a reply from the office in London telling me to send a demo tape and some information about myself. This I did with a certain sense of trepidation and shortly after I received an invitation to London for a chat, it certainly wasn’t an interview in the formal sense of the word. As much emphasis was put on your ability to fit in as to your professional experience as you would be living in close confines with the others on board. All went well and I got the job, however getting to the ship was my next challenge. When I left the office they gave me back the audition tape I had sent in, they didn’t want any incriminating evidence left lying around due to the legality of the station. Unfortunately my contact details were written on the tape box so they had no way of contacting me to arrange my trip out to the ship. This resulted a few days later in the guys on the ship broadcasting a very cryptic message for me to get in touch with London.
In all I spent 3 very happy years on the Mi Amigo, it was a great station to work for and I saw both the good times and the bad times of the late 70’s. However Radio Caroline has always had the capacity to overcome the most daunting of obstacles, this is due to the fact that to those people who work for it and fall in love with it, it is more than a radio station, much more. The 80’s
After the demise of WABC I was still living in the area and I picked up some engineering work at a station in Balina, a town further to the west. This station had been set up by a group of local businessmen with a lot of good intentions and not too much imagination. This lasted until the project finally ran out of steam and the presenters involved, myself included went off and set up in business together.
The downside was that the conditions were very basic, we operated out of a barn on a farm in Shropshire. Now those of you with an agricultural background will know barns have a tendency to be cold and draughty. This barn was no exception. It was a while before we moved to more comfortable accommodation in a converted garden shed in Ludlow.
The 90’s In the 90’s I found myself out in the desert in the Middle East and surprise, surprise there was a small local station run by Brits. It was not a licensed station in the true sense of the word but it had been broadcasting for such a long time in the desert that the authorities either were not aware of its presence or just chose to ignore it. It was a low power FM station whose signal struggled to get beyond the sand dunes so it was not going to be noticed by any one outside of the country. However it was a great opportunity for me to try my hand at radio again and I spent many a happy hour broadcasting to the camels and odd goat.
December the 23rd 2005 saw my return to Radio Caroline after an absence of some 26 years. I returned to the airwaves unannounced one Friday morning in a spare slot much to the surprise of some listeners who had not heard my voice for a very long time. My first ‘official’ program was when I stood in for ‘The Lad’ Johnny Lewis on Saturday morning the 7th of January 2006. My return was not without some trepidation, I had been out of radio for some time and the last time I had done real radio we were still using vinyl! Somehow I had managed to completely skip CD’s and went into the modern Computerised studio system. Fortunately I had always kept an eye on the way studio technology was going and have always kept some production capabilities at home, though it was not always used for radio. Before going on the air I had made one previous visit to the studio at Maidstone and sat in on John Patrick’s Friday show for a couple of hours. I had met John at Euradio 2005 in Calais and he suggested it was about time I returned to the station and said to come and have a look around when he was on. It was mainly due to John’s persistence that I eventually took the plunge and returned to the station. Fortunately for me I am not particularly superstitious seeing as it was Friday the 13th of January that I made a return with a show of my own and continue to do with occasional stand inn’s for the others guys when they are away. | ||
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I applied the usual long winded way at the time by sending a letter to the Spanish email address that we were using via the guys at Radio Mi Amigo who were based in Spain. I later found out from other DJ’s that this was a very haphazard method of contacting the station as you never knew where the mail would turn up. However in my case I got lucky Peter Van Dam on that particular day decided to grab the mail and send it on to London so my application was received in record time for the day. 
I was to meet up with Tom Anderson and travel out to the ship, the usual tender out of Boulogne was out of action and we were to go on a boat out of Calais. This turned out to be an ill equipped cabin cruiser no bigger than 25 feet in length. We spent that night and the next day sailing around the Channel and Thames estuary not finding the ship. We eventually returned to Calais at dusk to a warm welcome from the local Gendarmes. It was to be a further 10 days before I finally arrived at the Mi Amigo via our usual tender out of Boulogne. 
After Radio Caroline and involvement in one or two abortive projects my good friend Paul Graham suggested going to Ireland where there was a lot happening. So we loaded up what equipment and records we could muster and headed for the Emerald Isle to make radio. Now I am no stranger to Ireland in fact most of my family still live over there which was one of the reasons we headed for the west side of the country. We made contact with a local businessman Ian Walmsley who had an electrical business and set up on his land three quarters of the way up the side of a hill. 
Originally we operated from a spare room in the house but eventually converted a shed into the studio and ran a long feed up to the transmitters which were on the top of the hill. The view from the studio window was absolutely fantastic looking across from our elevated position towards the Sligo Mountains. At one stage in its life the station broadcast from over a bar in Charlestown. They were fun times, but not without their trials and tribulations like the mast collapsing during a storm and being whisked off by the Irish Special Branch for interrogation, fortunately we did not get locked up and in the end had a very good relationship with the authorities. It has to be said that the one issue that probably led to the demise of the station was losing the tall mast.
We broadcast from the Beleek Castle Hotel just outside Balina using one of the old ARW transmitters. It was fun but not very lucrative and we all knew the Irish pirate era was coming to an end. Around the time the authorities started raiding stations out east we decided to pull the plug. Several of the presenters moved on to the community and regional stations that were formed shortly after. I on the other hand decided to see what was going down back in the UK.
It was one of those great coincidences that Paul graham, who I had not seen for a year or so returned to England at the same time as me and we made contact again. He mentioned that a land based pirate station was setting up in Shropshire with the intention of broadcasting 7 days a week, something that had not been done before. Always one for an adventure I got in touch with Graham Symonds the main man at the station which would be called Sunshine Radio. I kicked off the 7 day service by presenting the breakfast program Monday to Friday, it was good to be back on the air! 
The conditions aside, the station proved hugely popular and many listeners were unaware of its legal status (or lack of it). Of course there were the usual rounds of dodging the authorities when they came visiting, we were fortunate that we had a well informed contact and I always managed to remain one step ahead. As with all good things it had to come to an end and the pressure from the authorities was getting intense. My life at that time was also taking a change in direction with an impending marriage. It was time to live a sensible life for a while.
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