News from the uk

Published in the East Anglian Daily Times


Radio pirates take to the airwaves


February 12, 2004 21:26

BBC Radio Essex has announced it intends to raise standards - or rather one
standard in particular.

The skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger will fly above a Trinity House
lightship to mark the Corporation's celebrations of pirate radio.

Forty years ago this Good Friday, Radio Caroline emitted its first test
transmissions from a vessel off Clacton.

The next day offshore pirate radio started to the strains of the Rolling
Stones' Not Fade Away.

For the next three years Radio Caroline built up an audience of up to eight
million listeners, who tuned in to hear DJs provide the sound of the
sixties.

The offshore stations became known as the pirates, not because they were
illegal, but because the press considered the word apt to describe the
gallivanting, swashbuckling behaviour of pre-hippy rebels.

But now, a new generation of BBC Essex DJs is set to sail again. For one
week only the corporation is teaming up with a whole host of other partners
to broadcast off Harwich and Clacton under the auspices of Pirate BBC Essex.

The station will be heard on 729, 765 and 1530 MW from April 10-17 when
presenters such as ex-Radio Caroline DJ Keith Skues - "the jewel in the
crown of East Anglian radio", according to former pirate John Peel - take to
the waves.

Afternoon slots will be covered by Steve Scruton, who said he used to be
tuned into his "tranny" from his mother's kitchen when it all started in
1964.

BBC Essex Programmes editor Tim Gillett said the new station would playing
music from the pirate era of 1964-7.

He said: "Those years of emerging British pop music are cherished in the
memory of pirate radio listeners.

"We'll also be featuring many of the songs championed by pirate radio like
that David McWilliams classic The Days of Pearly Spencer."