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Robbie Dale was born in Littleborough, Lancashire, on 21st April
1940. After spells as an antiques dealer, press agent, salesman, bellboy and serving in the army, Robbie was working
as a DJ in a discotheque in Kensington, west London, when he was spotted by Radio Caroline's Gerry
Duncan. Gerry suggested that he should audition for the station which resulted in Robbie joining Caroline South in
April 1966. He took over the evening Caroline Club Request Show, which became known as Robbie Dale's Diary.
He appointed himself “Admiral” when he founded the “Beat Fleet,” an organisation which doubled as
free radio supporters association and fan club. Robbie used both sides of the same single as his theme tunes at different
times. The A-side was I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman by Whistling Jack Smith but he also used the B-side
The British Grin And Bear. After the Marine Offences Act became law he elected to stay with Caroline and was joint
Programme Controller and Senior DJ for the South ship with Johnnie Walker. He presented
the morning show until a stomach ulcer forced him to leave the ship in January 1968, although he continued to work for
the station on shore. After Caroline closed down in March 1968 he joined Radio Veronica, the Dutch pirate, later moving
to Hilversum radio and TV. He returned to the UK in 1973 and ran an office-cleaning company. He was involved in a
failed bid for the Belfast commercial radio franchise, which went instead to Downtown Radio. He later moved to Dublin
and operated the very successful Sunshine Radio until government legislation closed it down at the end of 1988. He now
owns a holiday complex in Lanzarote
in the Canary Islands. Robbie writes about his memories of joining Caroline here and you can see
more pictures of him here and here. Some photos from Robbie's
own collection are available here and there are some more recent photos taken at Caroline's
40th birthday party and the Radio Academy Celebration of Offshore Radio.
(Thanks to Geoff Toon for some of the above information.)
“Robbie on radio” on 13th August 1966 on The Caroline Club Request Show,
an extract from the Offshore
Echo's tape Offshore Classics vol.8, used with kind permission
(duration 2 minutes 25 seconds)
Ian Damon Born in Sydney, Australia, Ian's first job
was with a music publisher but he always wanted to work in radio. He started with station 2RG in Griffith, New
South Wales, a small country station where he turned his hand to everything: sales, sports reporting, script
writing and broadcasting. Three and a half years later he moved to 2LF in Young, 240 miles from Sydney. In 1966
he left Young and came to the UK. He took a job as a salesman for Bowater Scott, but also found time to do some
hospital radio work and a bit of DJ-ing. When Radio London promoted a disco at the Rhodes Centre in Bishop's
Stortford, where Ian was the resident disc-jockey, he met some of the team. They suggested he should apply
for a job on the ship. Although concerned that the station only had a short time left before the legislation, Ian
was persuaded and he joined Radio London on 18th June 1967. Nicknamed “Wombat” by Tony
Brandon, he opened each show with the greeting “hi there, you there” and his theme tune Big Deal
by The Tony Osbourne Orchestra. He stayed with Radio London until the end, although he was on shore-leave on
the actual last day, his final programme being on 7th August. After a bit of work as a reporter on a BBC Radio Two
programme called Roundabout and some television announcing, Ian went back to Australia and worked in Bendigo,
Wollongong and Sydney. He returned to the UK and took a job in the sales department of Southern Television. From there
he moved to Capital Radio, where he combined a career in sales with regular programmes on air, using his real name of Ian
Davidson. Since then he has been employed by a number of stations throughout the south of England, including Radio Mercury
in Crawley, County Sound Guildford, 210-FM Reading, KFM Tonbridge and Delta Radio in Haslemere, mainly working as a salesman but often finding time to broadcast as well.
Ian appeared on the various Radio London restricted service re-creations and in May 2005 joined the latest version,
known as Big L, broadcasting on AM from Holland, it can also be
heard on-line and and via satellite. There are recent photos of Ian at the Radio London 40th birthday
party here and at the Radio Academy Celebration of Offshore Radio here.
Some of his own photos taken during his time at sea can be found on the Radio London web-site and he has his own site at www.idthewombat.co.uk.
Ian Damon at the start of the 3-6pm show on Radio London, Saturday 8th July 1967
(duration 2 minutes 28 seconds)
Rick Dane There seems to be some confusion as to where and when Rick
was born. Who's Who In Pop Radio says it was Cape Town, South Africa. John Venmore-Rowland's Radio
Caroline claims Port Louis, Mauritius, on 22nd February 1941. A 1967 profile in the New Musical Express says
Mauritius but prefers the birth year of 1945. The article also gives his real name as Randall Gautier. All agree that,
while still a teenager, he worked on Springbok Radio in South Africa as well as compèring touring pop package shows.
Rick came to England and studied acting at the Webber Douglas Academy, performing in a stage version of The Knack
and acting alongside Vanessa Redgrave in The World's Baby at London's Royal Court Theatre. After a spell
as resident DJ at the Wimbledon Palais and a brief stint on Radio City, Rick joined Radio Caroline in early 1966. He
worked on both ships and had a couple of different theme tunes: All For You by Earl Van Dyke and In The
Midnight Hour by Little Mack and the Boss Sound. He was involved in a drama at sea when, in May 1966, he helped
rescue two female sailors when their catamaran got into trouble near Caroline South. After he left the ship at the end of
1966, Rick continued to be heard on the station via the pre-recorded Lucky Birthday Bonanza competition. He
was involved in the promotion of concerts at London's Saville Theatre, then owned by Beatles manager Brian Epstein,
and was one of the many ex-pirates to join Radio One at its launch in September 1967. He was a co-host on
Top Gear but did not stay with the station for long. He also appeared in a 1967 movie The Mini Affair (also known as ‘The Mini-Mob’) alongside singer Georgie Fame
and a cast that included Clement Freud, Clive Dunn, Roy Kinnear and Willie Rushton. Rick worked in club promotion, both
in the UK and on the continent, and now has a company that installs audio-visual equipment to the hospitality industry,
based in Miami, Florida: London Town Associates.
To see a picture of Rick in action in the Caroline South studio, see Keith Hampshire's photo
album. (Thanks to Mike Barraclough for the link.)
Rick Dane on Sunday morning 13th August 1966 on Radio Caroline South and presenting an
edition of Lucky Birthday Bonanza from 2nd June 1967. The first tape is courtesy
of Ray Andrews, the second kindly provided by Steve
Kirby (duration 3 minutes 4 seconds)
Roger Day Born 29th March 1945 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Roger
was living in Kent during the sixties. According to the Kent Musicbiz web site, Roger's first brush with fame came with an appearance on Southern TV's
Pop The Question music quiz, hosted by Muriel Young in 1965. By the following year he was working as an accountant
by day and part-time DJ at night. Dave Cash told Roger that some Americans were in London,
recruiting for a new radio station. He went to see them and was invited to join “Swinging” Radio England. One of
the original team on day one, he was the only one to survive until the station closed down a turbulent six months later.
After a few months playing records in boxer Billy Walker's Uppercut Club, he joined Caroline South in July
1967. Known as “Roger ‘Twiggy’ Day, your thinner record spinner”, he opened every show
with his catch-phrase “Hi, hello, how are you?” His theme tune was Green Grass by The Ventures. Roger was on board the Mi
Amigo on the day the ship was towed away by creditors in March 1968. He then worked for Radio Luxembourg before returning
to the water with Radio Northsea International. (See The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame
‘Seventies Supplement’.) He has since been heard on Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, BRMB in
Birmingham, Radio West in Bristol, Invicta in Canterbury, Pirate-FM Cornwall, Jazz-FM London and County Sound
Guildford, among others. In June 2003 Roger started presenting regular programmes on the satellite version of
Radio Caroline but had to stop doing regular programmes
when he joined Birmingham's Saga (now known as Smooth Radio). Since then he has moved to
BBC Radio Kent where he currently presents a weekday evening show. This can also be heard on
other BBC stations in the south, covering Surrey, Sussex, Hants, Oxford and Berkshire. Roger's web site is at
www.rogerday.co.uk. For more photos and recordings,
check out Spotlight On Roger Day. In March 2004 Roger organised Caroline's fortieth
birthday party. There are pictures of the event here. He has also written about his
memories of joining his first station for our feature on Radio England and Britain Radio and
we have some pictures taken at their 40th anniversary reunion and the
Radio Academy Celebration of Offshore Radio. (Many thanks to Roger for getting in
touch. He says that he has absolutely no photographs from his offshore radio days and would like
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame to help him track some down. So if any of Roger's
former offshore colleagues have photos of him from his time in watery wireless, could they please contact either him or
us)
Roger Day in manic mode on an evening show from “Swinging” Radio England
in September 1966. Tape kindly provided by Stuart Russell (duration 1 minute 49 seconds)
Roger Day almost a year later, at the end of August 1967, presenting the 3-6pm
show on Radio Caroline South International. This tape courtesy of
Ray Andrews (duration 2 minutes 53 seconds)
Larry Dean “Swinging” Radio England launched in May 1966
with a predominantly American DJ crew, three of the team all coming from the same town of Moultrie in Georgia. Larry was
one of them, the other two being Ron O'Quinn and Jerry
Smithwick. Larry's real name was Frank Laseter. He had started working in radio at the age of 15 while still at
school. He had gone on to a number of different stations and, like many of his fellow American broadcasters, had used
various names on air. He says: “I first started using Larry Dean as an air name in June of 1963 when I was
hired at WVLD in Valdosta, Georgia. I continued to use that name until I left in September of the next year. When I took
the new job in Tampa, Florida, they decided that I should use ‘James Bond’. Not what I would have wanted but it
was a job. I returned to Larry Dean when I departed for WPTR
the summer of the following year.” WPTR in Albany, New York, had a fine jingle package produced by PAMS of Dallas and
when Larry left there to join “Swinging” Radio England, he brought a copy of the jingle master tape with him.
These jingles were too good to waste and a number of his new colleagues chose their DJ names from the tape.
Chuck Blair, Johnnie Walker, Greg Warren and
Boom Boom Brannigan were all WPTR broadcasters who, unknowingly had identically named
colleagues on this side of the Atlantic. Radio England did not last long and Larry did not stay for its full term. In
late summer 1966 he returned to America and resumed his career there. He can currently be heard, using his real name,
as the morning news man on country music station WSOC
in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can hear more of Larry in our feature on Radio England and Britain Radio
and see some recent pictures taken at the Radio England 40th anniversary reunion. (With
many thanks to Alan Field for his research and for passing on the email from Larry/Frank.)
Larry Dean playing much more music on an early test transmission from “Swinging”
Radio England in May or June 1966. Tape kindly provided by Martyn Webster (duration
1 minute 59 seconds)
Alexander Dee Born in Birmingham
in 1944, Alex trained to be an actor for two years after finishing school but,
instead of finding fame on the stage or silver screen, it was offshore radio.
He joined Radio City in 1965. This station, on Shivering Sands fort off the
Kent coast, had a huge turnover of staff, as various presenters were given a
one week trial and then paid off with a fiver for their troubles, but Alex
stayed for a year. In 1966 he transferred north to Radio 270, where he hosted
the 9pm-midnight show. He left the station in November that year after expressing
doubts about the ship's safety to a newspaper. It is believed that he was
later heard on BBC local radio but, when contacted by Monitor magazine in
1972, was working as a shop assistant.
Alexander Dee on Radio City, one afternoon in August 1965. This clip is part of a longer recording
available to members from The Offshore Radio Archive (duration 2 minutes 35 seconds)
Alex on Radio 270 from 1966. Tape kindly provided by Stuart Russell (duration 1 minute 44 seconds)
Simon Dee Simon's official Radio Caroline biography, released by
the press office in 1964, said that he was born Carl Henty-Dodd in Ottawa, Canada, on 28th July 1935 and came to
Britain at the age of 11. In fact this was not true. The book Whatever Happened To Simon Dee? reveals that he is officially Cyril Nicholas
Henty-Dodd and was born in England. In fact, traditionally, all the males in the Henty-Dodd family had Cyril as
a first name so they were called by their second name to differentiate them. So Simon Dee is actually known as Nicholas
or Nicky to family and friends. The rest of the Caroline biography is largely accurate. Simon was educated at
Shrewsbury public school (albeit briefly) and had previously worked as a bouncer in a coffee bar, an actor, a
photographic assistant to Lord Snowdon, designer for Christian Dior and vacuum cleaner salesman, among many other things,
before joining Radio Caroline for day one at Easter 1964. He had also studied acting with Caroline boss Ronan O'Rahilly
which was how his came to be the first voice heard on the station on Easter Saturday, welcoming listeners to the station before
handing over to the first programme which was presented by the only other DJ on the ship, Chris
Moore. Simon became the first star of offshore radio. His theme tune was On The Sunny Side Of The Street by
the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. The Thank Your
Lucky Stars web site reports that Simon was the guest DJ on this legendary Saturday evening ITV pop music television
show on 27th February 1965. Later that year he was the first pirate broadcaster to become a national star when the BBC
offered him a show on the Light Programme which, to use his catch-phrase, “can't be bad”. As well as
his radio programme, he had a flourishing TV career and his BBC chat show Dee Time was an enormous success. For a
time he could do no wrong. He appeared in a number of films including cult classic
The Italian Job
with Michael Caine. In 1970 London Weekend Television made him a lucrative offer to present a late night chat show. Sadly
this new programme did not work out and his contract was prematurely terminated after just a few months. It was the end
of his position as media golden boy. That same year he joined with his former Caroline boss, Ronan O'Rahilly, to
campaign against the jamming of the Swiss-owned pirate ship, Radio Northsea International. This campaign issued a
poster of Prime Minister Harold Wilson which caused some controversy. (There is a picture of Simon with a copy of
it here.) Official papers, recently released under the thirty year rule, show that he came
close to prosecution for his part in the campaign. Since then Simon has done a number of jobs, including working as a bus
driver and journalist. Although his career has not returned to its former glory, he did present a series on sixties pop
for BBC Radio Two in the late eighties. In December 2003 Channel 4 Television devoted two programmes to Simon,
scheduled back to back. The first, Dee Construction, told the story of his rise and fall while the second, after
33 years, was a revival of Dee Time. Clips from both can be seen on the Associated-Rediffusion web site. It is not known if more programmes will follow but, as Simon
said at the end of the show, watch out for another appearance in 33 years time! Simon was one of the many DJs to
attend Caroline's fortieth birthday party in March 2004. There are photos here.
(Thanks to Nigel Fell for the link.)
The first ever live music session on a British pirate station, from 1965. Simon Dee
introduces the Jimmy Smith Trio. The group had to play out on the deck because
Jimmy's Hammond organ was too big to get down the companionway into the studio.
Understandably, there is a certain amount of wind noise. Tape kindly provided by the
late Dick Morecraft. For the second live music session, see Alan
Black. You can hear more of Simon on the Chris Moore
aircheck (duration 2 minutes 56 seconds)
Chris Denning There has been some debate over whether Chris
Denning should be allowed into The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. The general consensus
seems to be that if he was an important contributor to sixties offshore radio (which he was) then he should
be included, irrespective of what he got up to in his private life. Born in Hayes, Middlesex, on 10th May 1941, Chris
was a radio enthusiast from a very early age. As a teenager he appeared on a short wave radio station from the USA and
on Radio Moscow. Keen to make a career for himself in broadcasting, he applied to the British Forces Network, was
accepted and posted to Kenya, where one of his colleagues was Keith Skues. On his return
to the UK Chris became the first announcer on the new BBC-2 television channel. Radio Luxembourg offered him a job
in the Grand Duchy and he was with “the station of the stars” for nearly two years. In March 1966 he came back
to Britain and, after meeting Ed Stewart in a club, was invited to join Radio London. He
was the first DJ on the station to be allowed to keep his own name. His theme tune was Right of Way by the Andrew
Loog Oldham Orchestra. Chris left to join BBC radio in August 1966. The following year he presented the
ground-breaking Where It's At on the Light Programme which also featured his old Radio London colleagues
Kenny Everett and Duncan Johnson. He was part of the
Radio One launch team but left the BBC to work for various record companies. He became a freelance voice-over and
was heard reading the news on Capital Radio in London in 1980 during a journalists' strike. Sexual indiscretions
brought him to the regular attention of the police and he was jailed for offences in 1985, 1988 and 1996. In 1997 he was
arrested in Prague and served a three and a half year prison sentence. In August 2005 he returned to the UK, was arrested
at Heathrow Airport and, in February 2006, was given another jail sentence. Following his release in 2008 he was
extradited to Slovakia to face child porn charges there.
Chris Denning sitting in for Tony Windsor on the morning of Saturday 21st May 1966. Tape
kindly provided by Stuart Russell (duration 3 minutes 8 seconds)
Dave Dennis After working briefly as a farmer, Dave trained
as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He presented programmes on both Radio Atlanta, the station
that later became Caroline South, and on Radio Invicta, a low powered sweet music station which later became Radio
390. On both, he used his real name of Neil Spence. He heard about the arrival of Radio
London and sent them a demo tape. He got the job and a new name: Dave Dennis, otherwise known as “The
Double D”. His catch phrase was a shouted “That's a lovely one there, squire” which he scattered
liberally throughout his lunchtime shows. Along with his colleague Pete Brady he helped
save USAF pilot John Wynne who had been forced to eject from his Voodoo jet at almost supersonic speed and had landed
in the icy North Sea (see here). Dave left Radio London in December 1966, having
released a record: Yes Virginia There Is A Santa Claus, written by his fellow DJ
Tony Windsor. Sadly, it was not a hit. He later ran the United Biscuits factory radio
station, was Programme Director of Nottingham's Radio Trent and taught the next generation of DJs at the National
Broadcasting School. He died in December 2007 and there is a tribute to him is here.
Dave Dennis live in “Dave's Den” from October 1966, an extract from
Offshore Echo's
tape More Highlights Of Big L part one, used with kind permission (duration
3 minutes 38 seconds)
Dick Dickson / Dixon Born in London in 1943, Dick's family
moved to Thame, just outside Oxford, and then to Hayling Island in Hampshire where he was educated. He then moved to Ramsgate
in the early sixties and remembers “that is when I heard Reg Calvert advertising for a
radio engineer and DJ on a very faint signal from Radio Sutch.” Dick got in touch with Calvert, Sutch's manager, and
soon found himself working on Shivering Sands, the old war-time fort that Sutch and Calvert had recently occupied.
Everybody on the fort was expected to contribute on air so Dick Dickson was frequently heard presenting programmes on Radio
Sutch. This continued as Reg Calvert took over the station and renamed it Radio City. At the same time Dick altered the spelling of
his surname. Radio Sutch's Dick Dickson became Radio City's Dick Dixon. During the summer of 1965 Calvert began
talks with Allan Crawford, boss of Caroline South. Caroline was losing listeners to Radio London and, as a result,
advertising revenue had plummeted. Caroline needed to cut costs and Crawford was thinking of buying Shivering Sands. He
thought that a nice stable fort would be a cheaper base of operations than a ship. Calvert was keen to take his money but
did not want to leave the radio business altogether so he dispatched some of his men to investigate another Thames structure,
Knock John, to see what the condition of the tower was and if it was feasible to use it for broadcasting. The initial survey
looked encouraging and a couple of weeks later, Dick was sent back with a small diesel generator and a Cossor transmitter,
previously used for putting out night-time religious programmes on 188 metres. The plan was that they would launch
“City 2” from Knock John. Unfortunately some one else had other plans for the fort: Essex businessman Roy Bates.
When Dick and his colleagues arrived, they found that Bates had claimed the tower and left two men to guard it. A certain
amount of disagreement followed. Despite press reports of fighting between the two groups, Dick says there was never any
violence. However Roy Bates did order the City men off Knock John and proceeded to return them to Shivering Sands in his
boat. On the journey back, Bates mentioned to Dick that he was looking for a radio engineer and suggested he might like to
join the team. At that time Dick wasn't interested. He already had a job. But when he got back to City without the
transmitter, Reg was furious and fired him. Dick was now suddenly free to take Bates up on the job offer. So he joined the
guys setting up the new station on Knock John, Radio Essex. He says “Although I was employed as a radio/audio
engineer, I filled in as a DJ/presenter on The Big Band Sounds when David Sinclair
was on shore but mainly I did the stint through the night from 2 to 8am. I used to like working through the early hours and
I still do.” He stayed with Radio Essex for about a year but now works as a technician for the University of Kent.
(Many thanks to Dick for providing the above information and to George Morris for the photo.)
a very short clip of Dick Dickson, as he was then, on Radio Sutch in 1964. Recording kindly provided by Martyn Webster
(duration 33 seconds)
Peter Dolphin was an actor. He was a regular on British television,
including a 1961 appearance in the legendary Danger Man series (an episode called ‘Sabotage’).
In 1966, in a gap between acting jobs, he briefly joined Radio City as a newsreader. Unfortunately it was not a good time
to be on the station. Only a few days into Peter's offshore career, the station was silenced by a raid
on the fort. This dramatic event led to the death of station boss, Reg Calvert, and to
the government's legislation against the offshore stations. Radio City was kept off the air for a week and, by the
time it returned, Peter had decided that there were safer ways to make a living. He returned to his acting career. In the
seventies he appeared in Gerry Anderson's series U.F.O (an episode called ‘The Psychobombs’)
and, in the eighties, he was in another science fiction series Tripods (available from Amazon on either
DVD or
VHS). Nowadays
he lives in France. (Many thanks to Peter for this photograph. Research into Peter's acting career from
UFO - The Series, The Actors of British Science Fiction, Fantasy & Cult TV Shows and
The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film & Television.)
Pete Drummond Born in Bangor, Wales, on 29th July 1943. As a
child he lived in Australia and France before attending Millfield public school where one of his fellow pupils was
Tony Blackburn. He trained as an actor and, while working in a play touring America,
realised that British accents were in great demand on US radio. It was the time of “The British Invasion” and
every station wanted its own Beatles sound-alike. This same phenomenon also provided a training ground for
Tommy Vance and John Peel among others. He worked on stations
in Wichita and Topeka but returned to the UK in August 1966. He joined Radio London the following month, staying with the
station until its closure. Known as “Dum Dum,” his theme tune was Marble Breaks, Iron Bends by Peter
Fenton and he ended each show with this piece of advice: “Smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you've
been up to.” Since his pirate days he has been heard on BBC Radio One & the World Service and now works as a
freelance commercial voice-over.
Pete Drummond on his final show for Radio London, the morning of Monday 14th August
1967. Tape kindly provided by Stuart Russell (duration 3 minutes 3 seconds)
Gerry Duncan (or Jerry Duncan)
was heard occasionally on Radio Caroline during the early days of the station but was mainly employed behind the scenes
as a producer, making taped programmes on land and recording commercials. He was also responsible for Caroline's
“sound of the nation” jingle package. Born in 1937 in London, he served in the RAF before finding work as assistant
to film director Lewis Gilbert. Gerry worked on a couple of major films, Light Up The Sky and Sink The Bismark
before moving into television in 1960 as a cameraman with ATV. He joined Caroline four years later and stayed until
January 1967. He died during the seventies. (His first name was spelt ‘Gerry’ in Radio Caroline publicity
material but this memo from 1964 shows that he preferred to spell it ‘Jerry’.)
