THE OFFSHORE CHUNK

W O N D E R F U L   R A D I O   L O N D O N

Radio London

Frequency: 266 metres medium wave (am)

Broadcasting from the MV Galaxy anchored in international waters off Frinton On Sea Essex

 

Where do I begin when reminiscing about this fantastic radio station.  At times it was too well run and sounded so professional I landed right back in the bosom of Radio Caroline.  The transmitters rarely conked out and they broadcast on a good power.  

At a stage just before the end of the Kenny and Cash show in the early evening foreign interference made the station a little difficult to hear, but generally they had a very good signal in North West London.   One other feature, unintentional, which had me dashing between Caroline and London was the fact that in quite moments under Radio London DJs talking you could here the record that Radio Caroline was playing.  Radio London ran a tight top 40 format with oldies inserted about twice an hour.  This meant that you did hear the same records quite often,  if I heard something different on Caroline I could tune over.  This phenomena was only present when Caroline moved to 259, not sure if the transmitter signals were mixing somehow with the ships being moored quite close to each other, or whether it was a fault in the design of the radio I was listening to.

My favourites were Kenny and Cash.  They put out an hour long show from 6pm to 7pm, I think, and it was great off the wall stuff.  Dave Cash was the more sensible of the two, but he and Kenny really worked well together.  Kenny was given rather too much leeway and in the end he upset Garner Ted Armstrong, one of the sponsors of a religious programme and he was temporarily sacked.   Kenny was featured in a feature film called "Dateline Diamonds".  This has been repeated on satellite tv recently, and showed  some pictures of the Galaxy, studios and some of the announcers.

The station used echo behind the presenter's voices.  Initially this was caused by the bare steel walls inside the ex-mine sweeper, and when this was overcome it was added artificially.  This was a very clever ploy, even on short-wave echo behind voices makes them easier to listen to.

The jingles from PAMs in America were just superb. They played them over and over again.  At times it seemed that they were better than some of the records.  Their "Hometown" and "Big Lil" themes were often played up to the hour as a treat for the listeners.

One thing I have forgotten to mention elsewhere is that every offshore presenter used to have a theme tune to his show.  The only one on Radio London that sticks in my mind whilst typing this is "Waltzing Matilda" which was the chief presenter Tony Windsor's theme tune.

A guy who was on a midday was Dave Dennis and he spoke with a sort of tommy gun voice, extremely fast and he was very popular indeed.

The presenters also used to read some advertisements live on air.  This was often part of a package offer to advertisers.  Radio London took the whole business of broadcasting professionally, and had an impressive amount of advertising booked and paid for in advance.

Ed Stewart, Peter Drummond were on board.

John Peel used to do some shows speaking quite fast and trying to sound American at times, when he was not doing the illicit "Perfumed Garden" show.

 

Picture courtesy of the Offshore Radio Site