Already
in late 1966 the writing was on the wall for the radio stations off
Britain's coast. The government of Harold Wilson, egged on by Post
Master General Tony Ben, was determined to bring in legislation to
make it illegal for British citizens or companies to supply the
pirates, work for them or advertise on the stations.
On
January 1st 1967 there was a bit of good news for a
change. As announced earlier by Caroline on New Year's Eve, Radio 390
returned to the airwaves. I remember, the next day, writing a letter
to Prince Charles protesting against the British government's actions
to sink the pirates.. “Why not”, I thought “the crown prince is
a paid-up member of the Big L club and has a Radio London T-shirt...”
After a few months I got a reply from the Home Office with the usual
lies.
The
imminent demise of the offshore stations was not the only problem at
the time. I also had to try and commit professor Hesman's German
“Kulturgeschichte” to memory. I found that this was best done
with the deep brown voice of Jim Reeves in
the background. Luckily both Radio 390 and Radio 355 (former Britain
Radio) now had a Jim Reeves Show on Sundays. The reason being that
after
a boardroom battle station manager Ted Allbeury left 390 and
went on to run Radio
355, taking most of his middle-of-the-road programming ideas with him
and some of the dj's.
Theodore
Edward le Bouthillier (Ted) Allbeury (1917-2005) had been a real-life spy during
the Second World War, decades before he got involved with radio and
then started writing best-selling novels.
Not
only Britain Radio had changed name... As it proved unsuccessful
Swinging Radio England went Dutch and turned into easy going Radio
Dolfijn and still later into Radio 227. It was hard to keep up with
the changes. Later more upset as one by one the fort based stations
fell by the wayside and my exams doomed...
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