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Mark Matthews. A recent photo from his LinkedIn page.
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Ray Clark has interviewed numerous people involved with Radio Caroline for documentaries and his book, Radio Caroline: The True Story Of The Boat That Rocked (reviewed here).
One of his interviews was with disc-jockey Mark Matthews.
Mark joined Caroline's on-air team in February 1986. This short chat refers to an amusing feature he used to run on his afternoon Drivetime programme.
We are grateful to Ray for sharing it with us.
MARK MATTHEWS: Mark Matthews did National Service on Radio Caroline around '86, '87. It's the perfect place to decide if you want to do radio or not because you live, eat, sleep and work in radio continuously
24 hours a day. You can't get away from it. I always used to think it was (station founder) Ronan O'Rahilly's big experiment - just to see how all these people who came from different backgrounds (got on).
Some were rich, some were poor, some were public school, some were... you know. All that sort of thing... (to see) how they'd all get on together with no money, because you didn't need money. There were supplies and everything built
in, and fags, etc.. (To see) how people can just live together. It was a fascinating experience just on that basis.
Mark Matthews on Caroline-558 on the afternoon of 21st March 1987. This clip is taken from a recording posted on The Offshore Radio Club Forum by Hans Hendriks.
Our thanks to him (duration 2 minutes 17 seconds)
Mark in party mood on Caroline Overdrive, 27th September 1986. This is an edited version of a recording kindly shared on the Internet Radiocafé, now known as the Radiotrefpunt (radio meeting point) forum by Vincent (duration 3 minutes 47 seconds)
We used to make friends with some people and others you knew were good for a ribbing (laughs) so we used to play various practical jokes on people.
A definite cohort of mine, who was always good for a laugh, was a Dutch guy called Ad Roberts. His English was perfect, like so many Dutch people - immaculate - so he did “Learn Dutch the Ad Roberts
Way” which ran on a programme I did - Drivetime I think it was, in the afternoon, for a while. We just picked the most outlandish phrase we could think of and get the Dutch translation of it. Then it would be your chance to
say it after that. “Would you pull your finger out of the dyke?” (laughs) then he would give the Dutch translation. “And now you say it” and we had the most camp music you could ever
find[1], that we found on one of those production albums, that used to run behind it. It ran for ages. I think it ran actually until we went a bit over the top on a phrase one day (laughs) and it was
never heard of again, if I remember rightly.
“Learn Dutch the Ad Roberts Way”. This clip from SMC Audio Tape No. 8, issued by De Stichting Media Communicatie (The Media Communication Foundation) in February 1986 (duration 55 seconds)
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