This time we have been given permission by Lawrie Hallett to play out his other pirate documentary. You may remember episode 21 where he talked to some of the London Land Based Pirates of the early 80’s. Well, this time he covers the offshore pirates up to 1984 and includes exclusive interviews with Ronan O’Rahilly, Tony Blackburn and John Peel about their time with the ships.  ..read more

This week we are again outside London. We're off to the south coast with Ian Harling from Radio Cavendish and South Coast Radio among  others. Here how they smuggled a FM transmitter from the Netherlands and another transmitter across to France for a one off broadcast back to the UK. Tales of cat and mouse antics with the authorities and once again Nick Catford pops up in the story. Great stuff from Ian ..read more

This time I chat to Chris Cooper from Birmingham. He was one of the people behind Empire Radio, the short wave pirate, then went on to found the Birmingham FM pirate EST before going on to The Voice of Peace and Radio Caroline. He can now be heard regularly on Radio Seagull. He is a great story teller with a great memory of his pirate days.  ..read more

Something a little different this week. Lawrie Hallett has given us a documentary he made for LBC in 1984. It was never broadcast by them because of the lawyers, but you can hear it now as part of our podcast series.    ..read more

So, here we have the second part of my chat with Mark Dezzani, Martin Spencer and Lawrie Hallett. We get through plenty, including talking about the contribution of some well known (and some not so well known) pirates, where, when, why and how some broadcasts took place and plenty of stories about some near misses with the authorities.  ..read more

Episode 11 finds us talking to Clair and Dave from London pirate, Rock FM. They came up with the idea of RFM in the pub, so it seems appropriate that we chat to them while they are having a Sunday lunchtime drink (hence all the pub noise). We hear about how they new nothing about LBP radio, not even listeners, and from this inauspicious start they went on to run London's premier rock pirate for five years. They even got a telling off from Radio Caroline ..read more

In the first part of this two part special, I get four old pirates in a studio and light the anorak touch paper and stand well back! In this four way conversation between Lawrie Hallett (Brian Marshall), Martin Spencer (Dave Lane), Mark Dezzani (Rodger Vosene) and me, Mark Wakely (Steve Justin). We talk about how we got into pirate radio and the first tentative steps into broadcasting and why we got involved in this illegal activity. There's plenty of radio talk and some insights into the beginnings of Radio Zodiac, Phoenix Radio and Alice's Restaurant. The second part of this epic will be out ..read more

This is the second part of my chat with Bob Lawrence. We talk about regulation in radio, the future of medium wave, Caroline's 648 licence, the end of LMR, his time on the Mi Amigo and plenty of other anorak stuff.  ..read more

In this episode you can hear the first half of my conversation with Bob Lawrence (Richard Thompson). We talk about his start in radio and his time as part of the original London Music Radio. We look at the trials and tribulations of being a LBP operator in the 1970's and the camaraderie between stations of the time.    ..read more

This episode we are in conversation with Gary Drew. His love for soul music and pirate radio encouraged him and some friends to set up East London soul station Melody FM in the mid 1980's. We chat about this and what he has been doing since. We also talk a little about the current radio landscape ..read more