John Edward On 5th March 1965 Parlophone Records released a single called I Pity The Fool, a cover version of a Bobby Bland song, performed by The Manish Boys. Lead singer with the group was one David Jones, later to find fame as David Bowie. The single was not a hit and The Manish Boys soon went their separate ways. While the singer carried on performing, two of the other band members decided on a change of career. The guitarist, Johnny Flux, and the sax player, Woolf Byrne, both joined Radio City. (John has very kindly sent us this photo of himself on Radio City's roof.) His theme tune was Sweet Dreams by The Shadows. After some months on Shivering Sands Fort, he applied for a job with a larger station and, in November 1965, transferred to Radio London. Programme Director Ben Toney persuaded him to change his name and he broadcast using his two Christian names as “John Edward.” John stayed with the station until the following July but never had a regular time slot, just deputising for whichever disc-jockey was on shore leave. He had a presentation style frequently compared to a young Alan Freeman although John wrote in a Radio London column in Disc magazine that he could not see the similarity himself. Following his career at sea, he returned to the music business. His record company, Hollywood Records, became the first ever independent label to reach the number one slot when Renée and Renato's much reviled Save Your Love stayed there for four weeks at Christmas 1982. John says “the song was written as a joke, to give the finger to Save Your Kisses For Me by Brotherhood Of Man among other tracks that made me chew the carpet.” John was also responsible for creating the robot Metal Mickey, the star of a successful Saturday evening children's television series, directed by former Monkee Mickey Dolenz. John has written the pilot for a new Metal Mickey series and is working with animators to bring the show to the screen again. Metal Mickey now has a girlfriend, Metal Mikki! John reports that, at a recent Manish Boys reunion, it was mooted to have a thrash at re-recording I Pity The Fool. Keep an eye on MTV. They could have a hit with it yet. For a picture of John on Radio London, see Willy Walker's photo album. For more recent snaps, see the Radio London 40th birthday party. John is one of the voices on the Oldies Project Fab 40 Show (every Sunday at 11am) and he recorded a special Fab 40 countdown for them at Christmas 2005. An edited version of that show is now available as a download from John's web site. He has recently been working on a radio project of his own. You can hear the results on www.commuvox.com. John has very kindly sent us a previously unpublished promotional photo from the sixties as well as the one above. There are more pictures on his site. He has also contributed to our Radio City feature. Many thanks to John for his help.

A a very short clip of Johnny Flux on Radio City from August 1965. Recording kindly provided by Karl Jones (duration 21 seconds)
John Edward, as he was then known, on Radio London from the morning of 19th December 1965. This tape courtesy of Albie Somerset (duration 1 minute 29 seconds)

Tom Edwards was born in Norwich on 20th March 1945. After finishing his education, Tom worked as a journalist but gravitated towards show-business stories and ended up working as an announcer on a Border Television programme Beat On The Border. He sent a demo tape to Radio City, joined them in September 1965 and eventually became senior DJ. He was known as “Tatty Tom” because he was always so immaculately dressed, even when on a rusting anti-aircraft fort miles from civilization. He used a couple of different theme tunes during his time with the station: Wigwam by the Ted Heath Orchestra and Skyliner by the Mitch Murray Clan. Tom was on board Shivering Sands the night that a boarding party raided the station. Everybody was held in a state of siege for a week and the dispute resulted in station owner Reg Calvert being killed. When Radio City was taken to court and closed down in February 1967, Tom joined Radio Caroline South where he stayed until August and the passing of the Marine Offences Act. On Caroline his theme tune was Las Vegas Scene by Wes Dakus and the Rebels. (Thanks to Stuart Aiken for the detective work, with the help of Keith Hampshire.) Tom presented shows on BBC Radios One and Two for many years and was a continuity announcer on Thames TV (unofficial site.) He was a regular on BBC local television and radio in East Anglia. Despite some well publicised problems with alcohol which interrupted his career, he fought back with help from Bob Monkhouse and was heard on five series of the comedian's TV show Wipeout. At New Year 2004 he presented programmes for BBC Radio Norfolk and Saga Radio and in April he joined in the fun on Pirate BBC Essex. In June 2004 The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame received an email from Tatty Tom: “Hi guys, into week 9 of having this pc so still learning my way around! Your info is amazing.. Came across the Shivering Sands pics being built in Gravesend.. Fascinating stuff. They were my ‘home’ for a long time as Radio City of course. When filming for Anglia TV for the 40th anniversary I said to the crew ‘if only I could do it just one more time’. My wish was granted with going out on the LV18 to do a show for Pirate BBC Essex. What with the Caroline reunion and then broadcasting was a weird, wonderful experience which I would not have missed for the world, right? Especially out in the North Sea. Seeing faces and hearing voices from my distant past was awesome. So what goes around.. comes around.. just like the vinyl we played sometimes in a storm force ten. My long awaited book This Is No Rehearsal is creeping up the publisher's pile. Started writing it back in 1995 and I pull no punches in both my personal and professional life. In other words a case of the good, bad and, at times, very ugly. Name names too. These day I live a ‘slowed-down’ life in a small village called Heckington in Lincolnshire. When the phone rings it could be Nottingham, London, the North Sea or Hollywood... well travel is the best form of education right? At 59 I only work now when asked to. Made a welcome return home to Norwich to do a New Years Day show for Radio Norfolk. Also sat in for my old mate ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton over at Saga in Nottingham. Pleased to say I don't think I've lost my touch.” The Tom Edwards web site is at www.tom-edwards.co.uk. Tom has very kindly contributed to our Radio City feature. (Many thanks to Raoul Verolleman for the photo, to Martyn Webster for correcting the theme tune details, to Robert Clark, Mary Payne and David Clayton for their assistance and, of course, to Tom himself. There are more pictures of Tom in Keith Hampshire's photo album and some more recent ones, taken at Caroline's 40th birthday party, here. We previously posted an incorrect birthdate. Apologies to Tom for adding on that extra year and thanks to Russ Ganderson for pointing out the error.)

“Tatty” Tom Edwards on Radio City from Saturday morning 20th August 1966. Tape kindly provided by Stuart Russell (duration 2 minutes)

Paul Elvey was an engineer and presenter on Radio Sutch and stayed on as the station became Radio City. We asked if anyone could give us some information about Paul and the man himself got in touch. So, in his own words, this is his story: “Prior to working for Radio Sutch I was working on various engineering projects in various parts of the world, getting rather fed up with always being away from home for long periods, even though the money was pretty good. While I was between assignments, I had heard about the new pirate radio thing and tried tuning in to a station on my car radio. I managed to tune into a very weak signal from Radio Sutch. In between the music came an advert appealing for an electrical engineer with particular experience of power generation. I went to an interview with Reg Calvert. We seemed to hit it off quite well. He offered me a good salary with one week on, one week off. That, for me, was pretty damn good. It has to be appreciated that, in order to get a large amount of RF power to pump out of an aerial system using medium wave, you must have plenty of electrical power available. And to do this from a small site is quite an engineering challenge. Shivering Sands was actually an excellent site because, once we had re-built the interconnecting suspension bridges, we actually had a very large site. This allowed us to erect a very good mast with plenty of height. But of course initially we only had one tower. The existing bridges were quite dangerous to use. When I arrived at the Towers I discovered that the power system was a load of lorry batteries and an ex-army 24 volt field generator. I explained the hopelessness of the situation to Reg, that he could never hope to pump out a strong signal unless he had some decent power to start with. What we needed was a mains voltage generator to power a proper transmitter and also we could re-instate all the electrical services on the towers. Reg agreed... We knew that a decent aerial was a must. Good old Reg sent out a mass of scaffold poles so that we could build our own. It did work pretty well but of course it couldn't stand up to the weather. The first real gale and the whole lot came crashing down. We then had a proper aerial delivered and we erected it with the riggers. As we had the five towers we were able to use the other towers for the guy ropes. This allowed for a very high mast, something the floating pirates couldn't achieve. (Although I joined as an engineer) I actually did more DJ work than most of the regular DJs. The reason for this was due to the warm up time required by the transmitter. I would turn it on about an hour before official start time but at quarter power then, after a while, half then full power. During this time I would DJ and I strangley acquired quite a following. I also did a show or two during the week and at weekends.” Following the raid on Shivering Sands, Radio City's fort, Paul left the station. He says: “I work now as an electrical engineer on research work. We are currently working on a new type of waste incinerator. The prototype is in Germany where I often work. It operates at much higher temperatures than the normal incinerator. This avoids the toxic ash. The other project that we have on stream is a helicopter powered by hydrogen peroxide so I'm still pretty busy.” (Many thanks to Paul for getting in touch and to Eric Jay for the photo. You can see more of Eric's pictures in his photo album. You can see a more recent photo of Paul taken at the Radio Academy Celebration of Offshore Radio in August 2007 here. Some of Paul's photos, taken on the Radio City fort, can be found on Bob LeRoi's web site.)

A couple of clips of Paul Elvey from the very earliest days of his broadcasting career on Radio Sutch - alone on Shivering Sands in August 1964. Recording kindly provided by Nick Widdowes (duration 2 minute 42 seconds)

Thanks to Martin Fokkens for this press advert.

Kenny Everett Offshore radio's greatest genius was born Maurice James Christopher Cole on Christmas Day 1944 in Liverpool. He attended the same school as Mike Ahern and considered joining the church but his first job was in a bakery. With a passion for radio and playing around with tape recorders, he sent a tape of a home-made programme to the BBC. This interested the Corporation enough to invite him down to London and he was interviewed on the Home Service's Midweek programme. Kenny hoped it would lead to a job with the BBC but it did not. Instead he joined the new Radio London when it launched at Christmas 1964. He chose his new name from that of the Hollywood actor Edward Everett Horton and both his own show and the double headed programme he co-presented with Dave Cash, The Kenny and Cash Show, won a massive following. His writing and tape-editing skills were phenomenal and Kenny was responsible for many of Radio London's more creative advertisements, jingles and promotions. Unfortunately his humour was not always appreciated by the management and he was fired for six months after making fun of the sponsored religious show The World Tomorrow, the station's biggest advertiser. Along with Jerry Leighton from Radio Caroline and Ron O'Quinn from “Swinging” Radio England, Kenny joined The Beatles on their 1966 tour of the USA sending back reports on the concerts, sponsored by Bassett's Jelly Babies. Sharing the same Liverpool background, Kenny developed an obvious rapport with “the Fab Four”. You can hear part of one of his reports here. He left Radio London in March 1967 and worked on Radio Luxembourg and the BBC Light Programme, later joining Radio One at its launch. Although hugely popular he was soon in trouble again. He was constantly being told off for criticising the station in the press and when he joked on air that the wife of the then Minister of Transport had passed her advanced driving test by bribing the examiner, it was the final straw. He was sacked. He presented some shows on BBC local radio and others on Radio Monte Carlo International, but it was the launch of London's Capital Radio in 1973 that returned him to the forefront of British broadcasting. Here he was reunited with his old partner Dave Cash and their Breakfast Show helped to establish the new station. There is an extract from a Capital Breakfast Show from 1974 on the Reel Top 40 Radio Repository. From Capital, Kenny moved to BBC Radio 2 and then back again to Capital. In 1993 he confirmed newspaper reports that he was HIV-positive but continued presenting shows on Capital Gold until his death of AIDS-related causes on 4th April 1995. A genuinely original talent, a naturally funny man and a brilliantly skilled editor, he was a disc-jockey whose listeners eagerly awaited his every word. Alongside his radio success, Kenny also enjoyed a television career, starting with Nice Time for Granada in the sixties, later with Thames TV and then the BBC. There are a number of sites devoted to his radio and TV work including Everettweb and kennyeverett.co.uk. A radio industry organisation, the Radio Academy, has recently launched its own Hall of Fame honouring people who have made an outstanding contribution to UK radio. One of the first recipients is, quite rightly, Kenny Everett. For more photos and recordings of the great man, check out Spotlight On Kenny Everett, and he also features in Duncan Johnson's and Dave Hawkins' photo albums.

Kenny Everett on Radio London on the afternoon of 4th February 1967, the day after having the exclusive first ever play of The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever. Tape kindly provided by Stuart Russell (duration 2 minute 38 seconds)
Kenny sitting in for Mike Lennox on a Big L Breakfast Show from July 1966. Tape kindly provided by Harm Koenders of The Offshore Radio Archive (duration 3 minutes 8 seconds)

Paul Freeman Real name Terry Palfrey, he contacted Radio Essex owner Roy Bates in November 1965, aged just 16, to ask if he could work as a DJ on his new station. Radio Essex had only been on the air for a very short time and was short of staff. Terry was given the job - and a new name. He worked alongside the station's founding team of presenters, Vince Allen, Richard Palmer and Mark West. He was only on Radio Essex for a few weeks, leaving just before Christmas 1965, but that wasn't the end of his broadcasting career. He was later heard on BBC Radio Medway (now called BBC Radio Kent) as ‘Paul Peters’ and, in May 2006, he told the story of his offshore career on an episode of BBC Radio Four's Home Truths programme. You can read more on the Radio London site. Terry now runs a department store but can also be heard on a community radio station in Dorset, Forest FM.

Chris G Real name Chris Gosling, he was part of the team of presenters heard on the programmes of one of the country's less successful offshore projects, Radio Tower. This station was based on Sunk Head anti-aircraft fort, about ten miles off Walton on the Naze in Essex. There were grandiose plans for both a radio and television station. Chris was 19 years old, living in Ipswich, when he heard an advert on Tower appealing for presenters. He visited their offices in Colchester and was offered a job. Radio Tower only lasted a few months and was off the air more than it was on. This was better than Tower Television which never made it onto the air at all. Following his brief offshore career, Chris worked in sales and marketing. He now operates an online TV service www.peoples-tv.co.uk and runs a video production company. (Many thanks to Chris for getting in touch and to Chris Edwards of Offshore Echo's for the photo. Does anyone have any recordings of Chris G on Tower?)

The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame needs your

Roger Gale The only pirate DJ to end up helping to run the country was born in Poole, Dorset, on 20th August 1943. Roger studied acting at the Guildhall School of Drama. However, as a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, he was a natural for life at sea and, in August 1964, joined Radio Caroline North, where he stayed until January 1965. In June he joined the south ship and became a Caroline “Good Guy”. This was a gimmick borrowed from station WMCA New York. The expression “disc jockey” was no more. The broadcasters were now all to be known as “Good Guys” and had to wear their special uniform of blue and white check shirts, grey trousers and yachting jacket, available from all branches of Burton's the tailors! The station was suffering from the competition of Radio London's Top 40 format and this was part of an attempt to update Caroline South's more middle-of-the-road sound. Unfortunately it did not work and another change in programme policy soon followed. There were staff upheavals and Roger moved on to join Radio Scotland as Programme Director. He later also helped launch Radio 270 off Scarborough. His theme tune was Horst Jankowski's A Walk In The Black Forest. After the pirates, he was a reporter on BBC Radio London and produced Radio Four's Today programme and Radio One's Newsbeat. He then switched to television, working on Thames TV's Magpie. He has been the Conservative MP for North Thanet for many years. His web site is at www.rogergale.co.uk (Many thanks to Steve Kirby for providing some of the above information. Photo courtesy of Roger's web-site, reproduced with kind permission.)

Roger Gale on a short clip from an early Radio Scotland programme The Top 50 of 1965 and from a news bulletin on 2nd January 1966. Tape courtesy of Martyn Webster (duration 1 minute 3 seconds)

Stevie Gee. Born Stephen Hackett in Lewisham, south London, Stevie had a job in a production office in the city after finishing his education but also worked as a musician on the side. After five years in the same job, he decided to go travelling and, after following a roundabout route, arrived in Amsterdam in 1967. He saw a story in a newspaper that mentioned Radio Caroline was opening an office in the city so he and a friend, Malcolm Spencer, went to pay them a visit. Malcolm got work helping out in the office while Stevie was offered a job as a disc-jockey, despite never having done any DJ work before in his life! He joined Caroline South at the end of August 1967 and presented the overnight show. Stevie can't remember exactly how long he was on board Caroline but Alan Hamblin, a correspondent to Hans Knot's radio report, has the precise details: “Stevie Gee was on board the mv Mi Amigo from Tuesday 29th August until Tuesday 12th September 1967. For most of the time he was on the air from midnight until 6.00am.” Our thanks to Alan for the information. Following his time on Caroline, Stevie returned to Amsterdam where he shared a house with fellow broadcasters Carl Mitchell and Alan Clark, and worked as a disco DJ and musician. He spent five years in Amsterdam, DJing in clubs and, while there, wrote a number of pop hits. He also appreared on some Caroline roadshows on the continent which he says were much better paid than his time on the ship! In the early seventies he moved to Denmark and was DJ, compère and singer in a large club in Copenhagen called Revolution. He was a member of a successful Danish band called Life but was forced to return to the UK when his father fell seriously ill and needed Stevie's assistance. Since then he says he has done a “straight nine to five job”. (Thanks to Stevie for telling us his story and to his brother-in-law, Steve Skinner for putting us in touch. Thanks also to Pinky Siedenburg, who used to run Caroline's Amsterdam office, for providing this picture of Stevie. She says that his friend Malcolm also worked on board Caroline South as a DJ “for about a day”. Does anyone remember this or what name he used on the air?)

David Gibson was only heard occasionally on Radio Scotland but was very much involved behind the scenes. He has been in touch with The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame. He says: “I've just came across your website, with myself listed among the Radio Scotland deejays, although I was more of an occasional broadcaster as my main job was handling the station publicity and editing/publishing 242 Showbeat, a monthly glossy devoted to Radio Scotland. Almost all the Radio Scotland pictures on your site are familiar as I originally commissioned and published them. In August 1997 there was a reunion dinner for ex-Radio Scotland staffers. We couldn't find very many - pity your site wasn't around then - but there was a major feature across the centre spread of the Glasgow Evening Times about the reunion, showing those we did find Mel Howard, who flew in from Canada, Paul Young, Sheena Russell, Jimmy Mack, Tony Meehan, Allen Mackenzie and myself.” (You can see the feature here.) Following his time with Radio Scotland, David says: “I went back to newspapers (both station managing director Tommy Shields and I had previously worked for the Daily Express and Scottish Television, among other places) and retired in 1998.” Many thanks to David for getting in touch, providing the photo and bringing us up to date.

Graham Gill Born Graeme Gilsenan on 15th April 1936 in Melbourne, Australia, he started in radio at the age of 14 at Radio 3UZ in Melbourne. After about a year he transferred to 3KZ where he worked as studio panel operator for Alan Freeman before becoming a broadcaster in his own right. From there he moved to Griffith in New South Wales, to 2RG as well as MTN-9 TV. At the end of 1965 Graham moved to Europe and, like many Australians of his generation, ended up living in London's Earls Court. He found work at the Wimbledon Palais where, like Mark Roman before him, he got spotted by Radio London. In May 1966 he joined the station, although his stay on the Galaxy was brief - just two weeks - before he was offered a job on the rival Britain Radio / Radio England operation. He also spent time on Radio 390 but when it closed down visa problems forced him out of the country and he moved to Holland. Graham returned to sea during the seventies, working on both Radio Caroline and Radio Northsea International off the Dutch coast. Here he sang his theme tune live every night over the backing of Junior Walker's Way Back Home. When the Dutch introduced their anti-pirate legislation in 1974 Graham joined Radio Netherlands (the Dutch equivalent of the World Service). He retired in 1984 but in 2002 was tempted back onto the air to present some shows on the short-lived Radio Caroline cable service in Holland. There are some pictures of Graham from his pirate past in Look Boden's, Roger Scott's and David Sinclair's photo albums and some more recent ones taken at the 2005 Amsterdam Radio Day and the Radio Academy Celebration of Offshore Radio.

Graham Gill on the Morning Requests show from Britain Radio in July 1966. Recording courtesy of Stuart Russell (duration 2 minutes 37 seconds)
Graham nearly a year later, on 14th June 1967, presenting the Lunchbreak programme on Radio 390. Recording kindly provided by Harm Koenders of The Offshore Radio Archive (duration 1 minute 2 seconds)

Roger Gomez Born in Whipsnade, in 1942, Roger could have become one of the country's very first pirate disc-jockeys. As early as 1961 he and Keith Martin were employed by a man called John Thompson to record programmes for a station he was planning called GBLN. It never made it onto the air so, instead, Roger forged a career for himself in the music business. For a time he was press officer and road manager for bass guitarist Jet Harris. In 1965 John Thompson was involved in the launch of a new station, King Radio, and Roger was invited to join. He did not have an auspicious start: he was stranded on Red Sands Fort, King's base, with his colleague Bruce Holland and a young helper with no food or drink. For ten days they lived on dehydrated peas. Despite the hardship he stayed with the station as it evolved into the more successful Radio 390. In 1966 he transferred to Radio 270, off the coast of Yorkshire, where he broadcast as Roger Keene. Following his time at sea, he moved to Canada from where Robert Ritchie has been in touch. He first met Roger in 1969/1970: “I'm not sure if he worked for CBC Radio or not but, by the time I got to know him a bit better, he was at CFTO-TV in Agincourt, a suburb of Toronto.” In early 1972 Robert drove Roger across Canada to a new job at a radio station in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. This was the first of a number of occasions when the two of them would set off on long overland journeys. The last of these was in 1982 when Roger was offered a job with the British Columbia provincial government and Robert helped transport his belongings to Victoria, BC. Then they lost touch. Former Caroline DJ Steve Young got to know him around this time. He writes: “I met Roger when he was working as a Public Information Officer for the Government of British Columbia here in Victoria. I owned a video production company at the time and Roger came in to see me one day to discuss production of a video for one of the government ministries. This would have been in about 1985 if my memory serves me well. During the course of our conversation we discovered that we had both been disc jockeys on pirate radio stations. Over the next 12-18 months I kept in touch with Roger, mostly about business although we did manage to grab the occasional lunch together. It was during one of our conversations that I realized that I'd heard Roger on one of my old alma mater radio stations, CKOV in Kelowna, British Columbia, where he had worked, if I recall correctly, in 1973-1974 doing an evening show. He was partnered with his own personal producer and they worked as a team to put on the show. Funnily enough I'd just left my job at CKOV to join another radio station, CKIQ, in Kelowan and I never did get a chance to meet Roger at that time, although he took over my time-slot at CKOV. Anyway, I eventually lost touch with Roger as I had sold my vido production business and moved on to other things in my life.” After reading about Roger on The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame, Robert Ritchie began investigating what had become of his old friend. Unfortunately he discovered some sad news. It seems that Roger died from a brain aneurysm in 1988. (Many thanks to Robert and Steve for their help. There is another picture of Roger in Guy Hamilton's photo album. As well as the recordings below, you can hear more of Roger on the page of Mark Hammerton's tapes.)

We have recordings of Roger in both his guises:
Roger Gomez on King Radio, a tape sent by Stuart Russell (duration 1 minute 57 seconds). More from this programme can be found on the King Radio page.
Roger Keene on Radio 270 from 3rd August 1966. This recording was made, at some distance, by Martin Kayne listening in Folkestone, Kent. He included it on a tape he marketed during the late sixties called A Salute To The Pop Pirates. This has been kindly passed on to us by Peter Heaton (duration 55 seconds)