UPDATED FEBRUARY 2026
Last month we brought you some Swinging Radio England Boss 40 charts from 1966. Later that year the station switched to a Fun 50 and we now have a few of those - either new to the
site or updated versions of charts which we previously published. See here and the following pages. Also new this month, we have some photos of offshore radio ships - and RNI DJs
and their studio - from the collection of the late Geoff Quick, kindly provided by his wife Carol.
We were sad to hear of the passing in January of Dutch DJ Bert Bennett (real name Bert Wijfjes), who was heard on Radio Caroline, Radio Atlantis and Radio Mi Amigo in the seventies. RIP.
Luke Davies's guest on the latest Radio Greats podcast is Emperor Rosko. Although he doesn't talk about his time on Radio Caroline very much, it may be of interest to you and is available
here.
Good news: The Oldies Project has resumed playing the old Radio London Fab 40 charts. You can hear the week's chart from 61 years ago on Sunday morning at 11:00 GMT, repeated Wednesdays at 18:00.
(Suggested listening via fmstream.org or onlineradiobox.com.)
Fans of Radio Caroline's seventies output will be delighted to hear that there are plans for another Spirit of the Seventies broadcast from the ship Ross Revenge. A number of the disc-jockeys from that period will be making a
welcome return to the airwaves and will be playing the music from that era. It is scheduled for 20th to 22nd March and will include a look back to the sinking of the old ship, Mi Amigo, which happened on 20th March 1980.
Bob Lawrence's video promoting the broadcast is on Facebook. (For pictures of the previous Spirit of the Seventies broadcasts, see
2022 and 2024.)
See the contents page and DJ Directories of the sixties, seventies and eighties for full details of this website. If you follow us
on Facebook, you will be alerted when the site is updated.
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SIXTY YEARS AGO:
13th February 1966: After nearly four weeks of silence, Radio Caroline South returned to the air on reduced power from a borrowed ship, mv Cheeta II, while mv Mi Amigo was being repaired
(more details here).
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FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO:
21st February 1971: Radio Northsea International re-opened, having closed down the previous September (more details here).
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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.
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.
(The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame is a British-based website. It only includes those DJs who broadcast in English and could be heard in the UK. Offshore radio also flourished in Denmark,
Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel and New Zealand. The absence of the DJs from these countries in the Hall of Fame does not suggest that they are any less deserving, just that they are outside the scope of this site. Please
see the links page for details of websites which cover offshore radio in other parts of the world.)
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The inductees in The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame are listed alphabetically. To find your favourite voice from the sixties either select
it from the drop-down list below, search the site using the Google box or click on the appropriate page from the table of contents beneath. For broadcasters from the later decades, go to the Seventies
Supplement or Eighties Supplement. There are some that we know very little about - see the help wanted page.
THE OFFSHORE STATIONS OF THE 60s, 70s AND 80s
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We are very grateful to everyone who has contributed information, recordings or memorabilia to The
Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. We are always on the lookout for more so, if you have any items of interest, please get
in
touch.
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A number of the photos, stickers and recordings on this site are beginning to show
their age. Apologies for those that are of less than perfect quality. Many of the 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 which 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 recording. 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 later re-recordings, please
let us know.
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame participates in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate
advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk. If you buy anything from an Amazon link on
this website, we earn commission.
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