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Flashback '87

Saturday 15 August 1987 was the twentieth anniversary of the Marine Etc Broadcasting Offences Act, which came into effect at Midnight on 15 August 1967. To mark the occasion, Flashback '87 broadcast an eight-hour documentary on 14/15 August this year, looking back at twenty years of unlicensed broadcasting in the UK, including both offshore and land-based stations. Clive Glover listened in...

Flashback '87's 'Twenty Years' programme marked a milestone in unlicensed broadcasts: a documentary the BBC would have been proud of! The eight-hour program me started in 1967 at 7PM and went year by year to the present day, including items from contemporary newspapers, extracts from programmes by numerous stations and records from each year. The programme was very well produced and was obviously the result of many hours of research — and searching to find some pretty rare recordings of some stations!

Legendary

Fans of the late 70s / early 80s land-based stations will have been delighted to hear extracts from stations such as Radio Jackie, Radio Amy, Radio Kaleidoscope, North London Radio, London Music Radio and the legendary Thameside Radio. Listeners more used to the late eighties soul and funk merchants would perhaps of been surprised to hear some of the innovative programming: serious discussions, genuine local news items and the infamous Thameside outside broadcasts.

Tapes of the programme are available price £30 from Flashback '87, 105 Newport Road, Leyton, London, E10 6PH and I would recommend anyone interested in hearing what the stations or the past sounded like to buy copies immediately. Funny though, quite a few or the voices sounded like some or the voices on stations today (including quite a few BBC and IR stations) — only younger or course!

Driftback 20

Driftback 20 was the name given to a special event organised to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the passing of the Marine Etc. Broadcasting Offences Act, which made it near impossible to operate an offshore radio station.

On Saturday 15 August, the Caroline Movement 'Britain's Largest Free Radio Organisation' hired three large rooms at the Bloomsbury Crest Hotel and put on a nostalgia show.

We hare two reports, from Red Breslin, a visitor 10 the event, and Chris England, present with the Radio Today team. We begin with Chris' report...

The Bloomsbury Crest Hotel, more famous perhaps for staging gigantic dances for London Greek Radio, had three rooms given over to Driftback 20. One room looked a bit like a cinema, housing the stage and large video screen in front of rows and rows of chairs. Another contained the sales stands and memorabilia, whilst the final room (possibly the most important) held the grossly overpriced bar.

Has Beens

A continuous stream of has-beens filed onto the Wogan-like set on the stage to repeat their well-known anecdotes about 'the good old days'. Nothing new appeared to be on sale either, but the well-stocked counters of Anoraks UK and the Caroline Movement were ideal for anybody needing to replace that well thumbed book or scratched record. The badly printed Souvenir Programme was a bit disappointing, in stark contrast to the professionally produced, glossy promotional material that most of us had received trying to entice us to turn up at the event in the first place.

Oh to have secretly bugged the bar!

Although the day's events started at 11 in the morning, for me the place didn't really liven up until the Buffet meal at 6 in the evening. The food was yummy. Then, whilst enthusiasts were kept occupied in the theatre with more rare footage, the bar filled with people from today's offshore radio scene. People from both Laser and Caroline were hugging and kissing and plotting and planning. Oh to have secretly bugged the bar!

Frosty Response

Bob Harris, anorak and phone-in presenter from LBC was spotted in the crowd. So too were Laser management. And on holiday from the States, ex-Laser's Charlie Wolf delighted the audience with stories or lire on board Laser's boat, The Communicator, and their relationship with the people on Caroline's boat, The Ross Revenge. Various suggestions, made by different celebrity guests, about how good Laser had been were met with quite frosty responses from the audience. Similar, I thought, to getting up in 1967 at a Glen Miller fan club meeting and saying how you love the Rolling Stones.

The funniest moment was during an auction. Up for grabs was a large, framed portrait of Tom Anderson of Caroline Overdrive. Nothing wrong in that, I suppose, until you know it was donated by Stevie Laine, his ex-girlfriend. Well, I guess it saved having to pay the dustmen to take it away.

The highlight of the entire day was Johnnie Walker. Whilst Ronan O'Rahilly, founder of Caroline, looked on from the back, Johnnie held the theatre audience spellbound with tales of his days on Radios England and Caroline in the sixties. Answering questions about his career, he didn't try and hide his marriage breakdown, and spoke freely of his love for his children. He pointed out that BBC Radio One was a lot freer than most people thought, and he was pleased, yet surprised, that twenty years on 'people still remembered his midnight announcement on Caroline on August 14th, 1967.

Radio Rebel

Diplomatically, he told the audience that he thought that living in the past was wrong, and that we should be looking to the future, which he felt was now in the hands of the land-based pirates. Without saying how obviously bad and boring he thought Caroline had now become, he praised Laser for bringing back exciting radio to Britain. He commented that both Capital and Radio One had changed their style to compete with the dramatic impact of Laser. Twenty years on, despite being tied to his Saturday Yuppie programme on Radio One, the king of radio rebels is still not frightened to speak his mind.

Finally, the evening closed with a photo call. Disc jockeys and engineers from the last couple of years of Caroline filled the stage, whilst Ronan hid in the bar.

I felt it offered nothing new for today's enthusiasts

Overall, the event seemed well organised and ran very smoothly. It was probably enjoyed most by those in their late thirties for whom 60s offshore radio was an integral part of teenage life, but I felt it offered nothing new for today's enthusiasts, and doubt that such an event will occur in another 20 years.

And onto Red's report...

The Central London location of the air-conditioned Bloomsbury Crest Hotel was ideally placed for the Driftback 20 convention, on a hot August Saturday afternoon.

Many of the visitors were there with instamatics and Nikons, video cameras and cassette recorders, a mix- lure of listeners and broadcasters, from the past and pre- sent. The broadcasters fell into various groups, the innovators of the sixties, the second and third generation from the North Sea and the Sunday pirates from the mid seventies and early eighties. All reminiscing on their experiences with a drink or two: from first setting eyes on Caroline to throwing wires over trees on cold January days. One or two infamous present day entrepreneurs promised big surprises within 3 or 4 weeks. Ah, no pirate radio convention is complete without the promises.

In the auditorium there were films old and new, professional and amateur. These were augmented by some of the offshore staff discussing their experiences. After having 'been well documented over the years you would have thought the subject would have been totally covered by now. Nevertheless, the stage held the attention of most of us, with the exception of the excessively boring and badly presented 'Offshore Radio, Politics and the Free Market' (obviously designed to help boost the beer sales in the other room).

Heckler

The fun really started whilst John Burch, the host for the day, was interviewing John Lewis, dressed in his original offshore radio boiler suit. A heckler started interrupting from the front row, his high, squeaky voice asking daft, anoraky questions. After a while the pretend displeasure from the stage turned to laughter, as they were unable to keep straight faces. The voice be- longed to a multi-anorak clad Charlie Wolf, who was welcomed to the stage with rapturous applause, where he joined Johnny to talk of the good times.

Painful Video

It was also funny to see Mr Wolf in a film about Eurosiege, standing on the deck of the Communicator desperately trying to coax a response from the DTI boat sent to watch Laser. Things like that made up for the boring 5 minute, hand-held 8mm silent film made In the old Radio London offices, or the incredibly painful 'Life in the North Sea' video shown during the tea-break. That was a badly made, unedited collection of long and boring shots of the mast, generators and studios of the Ross Revenge, with ear piercing 'actuality' noises. Some visitors suggested that a real live generator left running in the sales area might have been preferable.

It wasn't all films and videos. Walter Simmons and Theo Denker provided an interesting insight into the running of Radio Monique, the Dutch station which also broadcasts from Caroline's boat. They gave us the impression that they might soon be moving from the Caroline boat, or folding altogether. The touchy subject of getting paid was brought up, yet again. Then there was the audio visual presentation on Radio Atlantis, an interesting collection of slides was ruined only by the terrible quality loss: someone decided to point the slide projector at a small screen by the side of the stage, point a closed circuit TV camera at that, and relay its output to a big TV screen on the main stage.

Listening to these people, the feeling was that these were people who despite the odds would go further than just discuss the shortcomings of radio in this country and actually do something about it. Many envied not having the courage, opportunity, or freedom from commitments to have joined them.

The voice belonged to a multi-anorak clad Charlie Wolf

As visitors were returning to the auditorium after the break for dinner, an observant eye couldn't have failed to notice the arrival of the white haired gentlemen, talking to close friends and occasionally listening to strangers but never showing signs of too much excitement; remaining cool, calm and collected.

Photocall

The event drew to a close with a stage full of names from the past and present, while over the PA system Johnnie Walker's Man's Fight for Freedom was played, followed by the Caro- lIne theme. Ironically the station itself gave no acknowledgement of the significance of the date the previous evening, despite the fact that it was there at the start of offshore radio and outlasted its contemporaries. No, it was left to Bob Harris on LBC, who the previous night had devoted an entire hour to offshore nostalgia, with guests Johnnie Walker, Charlie Wolf and Keith Skues.

I left Driftback with sounds of conversations, music, introductions and applause ringing in my ears and films, faces, handshakes, smiles and camera flashes replaying in my mind's eye. Here's to the next 20 years as somebody said, but what will we be remembering then?

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