30. FRESH PAINT AND AN ABUNDANCE OF CAROLINES

Very much like Marcel Proust's 'madeleine moment' it was the smell of fresh paint at a friend's house that today brought another personal highlight from the offshore days back to mind... I remembered that there was a time when three Radio Carolines were on the air. At that crucial occasion it so happens that I had to spend a few nights in the spare room. My own bedroom was being repainted, by my dad and myself. In fact the smell of paint permeated much of the house.

Months before the threat of anti-pirate legislation doomed, it was mostly the power of water and winds the wireless buccaneers off Britain's coast had to contend with... So during a massive storm late on January 19th 1966 the MV Mi Amigo, home of Radio Caroline South started drifting and subsequently ran aground on the snow-covered beach at Holland Haven (Frinton-on-Sea). At the crack of dawn radios remained silent as transmissions had ceased when the ship entered British waters. After failed attempts by the tugboat Titan, the Mi Amigo refloated herself at high tide by winding on the repositioned anchor. Upon inspection it proved that the hull was damaged and the vessel was towed to Zaandam in the Netherlands for repairs in dry dock.

In those days -not to be unfaithful- I did my best to regularly tune in to Radio Caroline North off the Isle of Man. But then suddenly Caroline South was back, but from a different ship. Mrs Britt Wadner (1915-1987), the blonde 'Queen of pirate radio', had offered Ronan the use of her Swedish Radio Syd* ship 'Cheetah 2”. The vessel having been driven from its usual anchorage in the Baltic by pack ice.

Much technical wizardry and many dead-airs later the programmes of Caroline South resumed on 199 m from the Cheetah on February 13^th 1966, be it at fairly low power. Then on April 5^th the Mi Amigo appeared alongside the Swedish vessel after repairs and a refit had been finalized. It was time for the fun to kick off.

The idea was that the Cheetah would relay the programmes on 199 m from the Mi Amigo which was now broadcasting on an announced 259m (253 in fact) with 50 kWatts of power. That did happen, but for a time also separate programmes were aired, resulting in two Caroline Souths, and off course, in the Irish sea, there still was Caroline North. What is more, a lot of on air banter was at times going on between both South ships. Evenings for me in the spare room, my paint-free refuge, were full of laughter during the link-ups between the vessels. I remember listening to Dave Lee Travis and Graham Webb on the Cheetah and Tony Blackburn with Norman St.John on the Mi Amigo. The fun wasn't to last though. On May 1st Britt sailed her radioship to Spain and later on to The Gambia, where she obtained a broadcasting license. And in our neck of the woods Caroline South sounded as loud as Big L. It's an ill wind...

* Syd means South and is pronounced more or less like Sud in French.

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28. THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL FOR THE PIRATES

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 1^st 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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27. CHOOSING BETWEEN STUDYING AND 60's CAROLINE

In 1965 and 1966 it really kicked off along the British coast. Although because of my studies in Ghent I had somewhat less time to monitor the goings on at stations like KING, 390 and Radio Essex, the start of Radio Scotland from the Comet and the moment when Swinging RadioEngland and Britain Radio rocked up on board the Laissez Faire did not go unnoticed.

In Ghent, after lunch in 'De Brug', a handful of us would hang out at the Blandijnberg talking about the music of the day and about offshore radio. Often, when we had an hour to spare, we went to the closeby 'kot' of Jos Borré to listen to Radio Caroline. During lessons we even 'pestered' one of the assistant professors, McCauley, with tales about the pirates. So much so that, for our benefit, the young Scotsman later included a question about the offshore stations in the written English exam.

In the day Germanic philology still consisted of the study of three main languages: Dutch, English ànd German. For me listening to the offshore stations had been a great help to get a good grasp of colloquial English. That came to the fore when one day, during a talk about the poet Keats, professor Willem Schrickx (1918-1998) told a joke in English and in a packed auditorium I was the only one who laughed. Which made an unhappy professor comment in his native Antwerp dialect “d'er is er ier mor ene deen Engels kent”.

At university my German didn't quite match my knowledge of English. But it wasn't too bad either since for a number of years I had been obsessed with Franz Kafka. In fact I had read every single word this Jewish author from Prague, who wrote in German, had ever committed to paper. 

By sheer coincidence my professor German, Herman Uyttersprot (1909-1967), had written extensively about Kafka. Uyttersprot was good fun in spite of the fact that he stood before us making jokes whilst dying of throat cancer. One of his last bits of fun was teaching us a new German word to describe the French scantily clad film star Brigitte Bardot. He called her “eine Nacktrice”. My time in Ghent was not always plain sailing, especially the Logics course proved somewhat of a nightmare. But in spite of a very heavy workload every night I tried to hear at least one hour of the Johnnie Walker Show on Caroline.

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09. MORE UN-PC PECCADILLOES

With hindsight it proved that, a few years later, my next choice of favourite shortwave broadcaster was also most politically incorrect! My aim had been to pick up Springbok Radio in Afrikaans, because it is a language that is easy to understand for speakers of Dutch. That proved no simple matter, as these broadcasts were for domestic consumption only and not directed towards Europe. So I had to settle for Radio RSA broadcasting in Dutch from Johannesburg. In spite of the fact that it was the mouthpiece of the apartheid regime I was fascinated by the station. So much so that I collected titbits of radio news in a stencilled magazine called ‘Bokmakierie Express’. The name referred to the unique species of yellow, green and grey coloured ‘bush-shrike’, a bird native to Southern Africa. Even to this day, when I hear the loud melodious song of the Bokmakierie mixed, as it was, with RSA’s station call "Ver in die Wêreld Kitty", it still makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.

Some years after that, in 1970, even a Radio RSA listening group was formed during a get together in Utrecht. Most of us were in fact fans of ‘De puntjes op de X’, RSA’s dx-programme presented by Chris Uitzinger (1926-2006). Not to be outdone by the Dutch, a year later a garden party was organized in Belgium, at the home of antenna-specialist Hubert Carton in Loppem, near Bruges. As South-African officials were going to be present at this do, I popped in at the embassy in Brussels. The group wanted to make sure, that whoever was going to put in an appearance at our meeting, was well aware that our love of Radio RSA did by no means extend to the racist policies of the South African government. Having delivered this message, the Embassy’s chargé pointed to the corner  of his  office and  told me to “pick up the stick” that stood there. “Surely, he’s not going to beat me” I thought. Seeing that I was reluctant to follow his order, he added “walk with it”. Later the chargé explained that the artfully carved walking stick had belonged to Paul Kruger (1825-1904) the first president of the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the face of Boer resistance against the British. The walking stick, called a kierie in Afrikaans, was on its way back to RSA, having been on display at an exhibition in The Netherlands. 

As it happens, it was on Radio RSA, that my voice first hit the airwaves. In November 1969, at the studio of RSA-member Izaak De Kramer in Tongeren, we both recorded season’s greetings for the X-mas edition of Chris Uitzinger’s DX-programme. It was weird to subsequently hear one’s voice filter through the static from half a world away. Soon however even more outlandish things were waiting in the wings. But first, I had to wade through a few more acres of shortwave real estate.