UPDATED JANUARY 2012 - HAPPY NEW YEAR

New this month: Terry Bate, who worked for Radio Caroline in the sixties, has sent us a great photograph of himself and the station boss Ronan O'Rahilly; David Gibson, who edited Radio Scotland's 242 magazine, has provided a rare copy of the first issue; and Britain Radio's Jack Curtiss and Johnny Dark (alias airtime salesman Harry Putnam) recently met up again. We have a photo. See the contents page and DJ Directories of the sixties and seventies for full details of the site.

This graph shows the number of daily visitors to The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame during December (as of 2am on 31st). Guess which night ITV showed Richard Curtis's pirate-based film The Boat That Rocked! 118,168 people visited The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame during 2011, slightly down on last year. 2007 still holds the record with 283,461. Despite the decline, it is immensely gratifying that so many people are still interested in the site and in the subject of watery wireless, more than twenty years after the final offshore broadcast. Our grateful thanks to everyone who has contributed during 2011. We wish you all a very happy new year.
 
Congratulations to Radio London's Dave Cash and his new wife, Sally. They have posted a video of their recent wedding on YouTube.
 
Former Radio Caroline senior DJ Tom Lodge posted this message on his Facebook page on Christmas Day: “Dear Friends, Some of you know that I have cancer, and so now, I want to share with you that on January 3rd I am having a CAT scan, to gather information to see whether I decide to have an operation or not. Finding out the facts. This is an amazing adventure. My whole life is an adventure. Wow! I have done so much in this life. Cowboy, arctic ice fisherman, author, gold miner, broadcaster, radio corespondent, deejay, festival organizer, drop in center manager, teaching the exploration between creativity and technology, professor, seeker, real estate salesman, pilot, author again and Zen master. I am full, I am content. What a gift. Thank you.” The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame wishes Tom the best of luck with the scan.
 
Congratulations to former offshore DJ Roger Gale who was awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours list for public and political services.

IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS MONTH:

29th January 1962: Denmark's two offshore stations, DCR and Radio Mercur, merged. This meant that the combined station now owned three ships. One of them, the original mv Cheeta, was put up for sale. It was bought by Mrs Britt Wadner who launched Radio Syd off the coast of Sweden a few months later.

Britain's first offshore radio station, Radio Caroline, began broadcasting at Easter 1964 from a ship anchored just outside UK territorial waters. She was followed by a host of other radio stations based on boats and marine structures dotted around the coast.

These “pirates” rapidly won an enormous and enthusiastic audience. There are other web-sites which tell the stories of the various offshore stations but
The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame
has been set up to honour the stars, the broadcasters, from that golden era of music radio.

This site is a tribute to the people who endured a daily battle with the elements to provide a soundtrack to the swinging sixties.

A number of the photos, stickers and recordings are beginning to show their age. Apologies for some of the less than perfect quality. Many of these photographs were distributed freely by the various radio stations and were intended for as wide a circulation as possible. Others have been donated to The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame that are of unknown origin. Where photos have been scanned from books, newspapers or magazines, we have given credit. However, if anybody believes that their copyright has been inadvertently infringed by the inclusion of an item on this site, please get in touch and it will be removed immediately. Similarly, anybody who has supplied audio for The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame has been credited but tapes get passed from collector to collector and often there is no way of knowing who made the original recordings. Our apologies to anyone who thinks their work has been used here without due acknowledgment.
 
The name ‘Radio London’ and the RL logo are used by kind permission of Radio London Ltd.

The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame links to MP3s which can be downloaded by UK-based customers from Amazon. As in a traditional record shop, Amazon offers multiple versions of some songs. It isn't always easy to identify precisely which version is which. We have endeavoured to ensure that each link leads to the appropriate version of the relevant track - the one that was played by the offshore DJs of the era - but please listen carefully before purchasing. If you discover that any of them are re-recordings, please let us know.
 
You will need a Real Player to hear the airchecks on The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame. There are two types of Player. The free one is perfectly adequate for listening to these clips although the Real.com site will encourage you to pay for a more exotic version. Either can be downloaded by clicking on the left icon below. Correspondents have also suggested the Real Alternative or the latest version of the VLC Media Player.

   

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