This update, the one I promised yesterday, is taking longer than I thought and rather than upload something that has major errors, I am giving myself another 24 hours to complete it. So please check back tomorrow, you won't be disappointed.

This phase of the story is all about the National Enquirer. But in 1964-1965 what was the National Enquirer that Robin Leach made his money from, but did not wanted be reminded of when he also became one of the "rich and famous"? ​Here is how the Guardian described this weekly tabloid:

Take another look at yesterday's blog. I have both edited it and expanded it with text and illustrations.

James McGregor has asked me to take a second look at Ian Cowper Ross' book 'Rocking the Boat', that was originally published in 1990, because he alludes to some of the dark truths lurking beneath his own fabled accounts. However, Ian Cowper Ross is a subject all by himself and in due course I will reveal all about who he really is and how he became the scriptwriter of rubbish for Ronan O'Rahilly to prevent everyone from knowing the really dark and sinister story of Radio Caroline.

Within the next 72 hours I will be linking yet another new page to this site and this one will begin to place the entire story called 'Radio-Noir' in context - after it has appeared here in blog format. So, all of the angry trolls with their hate speech who are afraid of the doom and gloom that will follow the unmasking of their little religious cult will get the real story, in installments - free of charge and Online!

Forget all that peace and loving awareness nonsense, which was accompanied by that so-called spiritual embracing of John F. Kennedy that Ronan O'Rahilly harped on about!

George Saunders has repeatedly asked 'The Trio' about a possible I.R.A. connection to Radio Caroline (1964-1967), well, there isn't one. That pleased George who is a peaceful man and a very loyal British subject.

But what has emerged from editing this blog and putting the real story together for 'Radio-Noir', is something very sinister indeed.

The reason for moving the commercial side of Radio Caroline to New York at the end of 1964, was to compete with the arrival of 'Radio London' as a clone of KLIF in Dallas, Texas, by forming another American link using WMCA in New York.

Robin Leach had his own agenda for getting a good story into the 'National Enquirer' by setting up Robert F. Kennedy into delivering an "in your face Harold WIlson" speech on St Patrick's Day in 1965. The British were the oppressors and they should let the Irish go free: they should be liberated from British occupation. It would make a sensational story. Leach was stirring the pot to generate tabloid sales.

But Bobby Kennedy was walking into a very sinister trap rigged by Ronan O'Rahilly.

But why?

I became curious as to what the situation was in 1965, and I discovered the following article which implies that the bombing and the shooting was all over, but of course by 'The Troubles' had not even begun.

So who stirred that pot?

The finger points to one person: Ronan O'Rahilly.

The entire 'Caroline Kennedy Hoax' really served one purpose, and one purpose alone - to get Bobby Kennedy to make that speech which was then played to Harold Wilson as a St Patrick's Day guest, on March 17, 1965.

Among the other guests was Ronan O'Rahilly!

None of this had anything to do with Radio Caroline as a commercial broadcasting station, but for Robin Leach he hoped that it would result in a sensational scoop of international proportions by dropping Bobby Kennedy into the mire of British-Irish politics. Not only that, but it was rigged to humiliate Prime Minister to his face among assembled guests who included, Ronan O'Rahilly.

Great stuff for a tabloid.

But I wonder if he realized that Ronan O'Rahilly was having a great laugh at Wilson's expense with this anti-British rhetoric?

I wonder whether it ever crossed Ronan O'Rahilly's mind while he still had one, before he died, whether he was in part responsible for all of bombing and killing and maiming and misery that would soon follow not just in Ireland, but on the mainland of Great Britain?

​Do you wonder why Harold Wilson hated Radio Caroline?

 The other day I was handed a series of emails.

They originated with Colin Nichol in Australia.

Colin has been very helpful to this ongoing investigation conducted by 'The Trio', because he has followed-up by asking new questions for them concerning people who he worked with at 47 Dean Street during 1964. One of them was a fellow Australian, like Colin and Allan Crawford. That person knew of the plans for Radio Atlanta at the beginning of its second phase in 1963, but few seem to understand that there was an earlier phase. That phase involves a lot of details that have been obfuscated and confused, but which are also at last being unraveled.

Colin is primarily knowledgeable about the second phase and he personally remembers when Allan Crawford told them about the addition of Radio Caroline.

The early broadcasting side of that second phase took place at 47 Dean Street. Colin, and his fellow Australians who had prior training and experience at commercial radio stations in Australia, personally trained the early novice Caroline DJs in a studio on the top floor of Craword's Dean Street office/studio building.

But what they did not know, because Allan Crawford did not tell them, was that the addition of the ship that was to be used by Radio Caroline, was a clause in his own ability to lease the mv Mi Amigo for Radio Atlanta.

In June 1963 Allan Crawford, after first meeting Ronan O'Rahilly during the early part of that same year, sent him off to Houston, Texas to perform an errand. O'Rahilly flew from Heathrow to Idlewild Airport in New York. Later, after the murder of President Kennedy in November that year, it would be renamed 'JFK'. From New York he flew down to Houston where he stayed its Continental Hotel.

O'Rahilly's job was to meet Charles W. (Bill) Weaver. At that time the company called Project Atlanta Limited had not been formed, and would not be registered until O'Rahilly returned with positive news. Even then, the impressive line-up of directors were not to be seen, other forces had to get involved to make both Atlanta and Caroline possible. Those forces had nothing to do with Ronan O'Rahilly who was the mere "dog's body" in all of this. He was paid, he had a good time, but he was not a major player.

During the previous year of 1962, Crawford had unsuccessfully negotiated for the lease of the mv Magda Maria (as the Mi Amigo was then), which was anchored off Brightlingsea, Essex. Bill Weaver was staying at a hotel in London. But the sticking point was a legal issue, and it was only after Crawford had received a favorable legal Opinion from a QC, that he had something new to show to Bill Weaver in order to try to get him to change his mind. But by then it was too late, because Bill Weaver had taken the ship to Galveston Island, Texas under the new name of Mi Amigo.

Bill Weaver was both the national head of sales for Gordon McLendon's radio stations, and manager of McLendon's KILT in Houston, Texas. Another assignment given to Bill Weaver was to go to Stockholm, Sweden and shut down Radio Nord. He was then to dispose of both its land-based and ship board broadcasting equipment, and then to either sell or scrap the ship itself.

Accompanying Bill to Stockholm was his wife, and both she and their daughter have been working in cooperation with 'The Trio', in order for the true story to be told - at last. That true story involves CIA involvement and it is something that Rusling did not understand at all, and which many have dismissed as nonsense. But having not only seen documents courtesy of Weaver's daughter, and being able to subsequently identify a key person involved with the Mi Amigo as a probable CIA 'asset', 'The Trio' are continuing to investigate everything to do with both Radio Nord and its sister station Radio Mercur.

When Ronan O'Rahilly died the other day, Colin sent 'The Trio' an Australian news report with typically misleading information about the Radio Caroline project (1964-1967). He then sent a link to the British paper where all the nonsense had come from. I am of course referring to the 'Caroline Kennedy Hoax', (although these newspaper reports are also full of a lot of additional errors). But that is what happens when reporters dig into their newspaper archives to see what somebody else has previously written, but they don't perform due diligence to discover if the original reports have been revealed to be untrue.

Today the news media in general has restricted its expenditure in the area of original research and 'Wikipedia' actually forbids inclusion of original research, so their own lies and distortions remain uncorrected. The 'Wikipedia' entry for Radio Caroline is a classic example of their untrue reporting.

Consequently there is a need for 'The Trio' to both self-fund and blow the lid off the lies and hypocrisy being passed off as genuine news, especially when 'gems' like this one reproduced from the London Daily Mail, April 23, 2020, are reprinted as 'fact'; over and over again:

Unfortunately the newspaper editor switched the picture of the Fredericia for the Ross Revenge because one was black and white and the other was color. The editor also switched headlines by replacing 'Harold Wilson' for 'Radio Caroline', but the main text was left unchanged and as submitted.

A copy of the recording which is referred to in the Express and Star article, is in the possession of 'The Trio'! That recording is composed of two parts:

The first part contains the introduction by Robin Leach who pretends to be watching from his New York City office window, the St Patrick's Day parade marching past on the street below him. The quality is reasonably good.

The second part is of very poor quality, because it was made over a telephone handset held by Bobby Kennedy on one end with Robin Leach holding his handset next to a wire tape recorder.

The hoax itself is quite complicated because Robin Leach never admitted to working as a stringer for the U.S. tabloid National Enquirer when an ex-TV station writer-manager named George Bernard who became Leach's partner decided to write a book in 1977 called 'Inside the National Enquirer ... Confessions of an Undercover Reporter', he obscured Robin Leach's true identity by naming him "Reggie Crawford".

So who was Robin Leach?

Robin Douglas Leach was born on August 29, 1941 and attended Harrow County School for Boys where he edited a school magazine called 'The Gayton Times'. He was 14 years of age. When he turned 15 he became a general news reporter for the 'Harrow Observer' and he started a glossy town magazine at 17 years of age. The following year age 18, Robin Leach then got hired by the 'Daily Mail' as their youngest 'Page One' reporter. In 1963 he emigrated to the USA and took on a number freelancing jobs which included the 'National Enquirer', but although it became a major part of his professional road to success, he never mentioned it, and this is why George Bernard called him 'Reggie Crawford' in his book. 

But it was Leach who convinced George Bernard who had been working for a US TV station, to go into business with him in New York. Together they secured a small office space above what was at the time, the Ed Sullivan Theater. It was on that stage of that theater where the Beatles performed to the screaming delight of both its 'live' audience, and to the millions of teenage television viewers in living rooms across the USA, who were watching Ed Sullivan's weekly showcase of vaudeville performers.

Leach is identified as being one of the National Enquirer's best freelance reporters, but Leach had a problem getting material because the tabloid had a terrible journalistic reputation, yet staggeringly high weekly sales. Few people ever wanted to be associated with the paper in print because of the lurid, fanciful and sensational stories that it carried, and it was known that the Italian-American owner had originally converted his paper to a national publication with help  from funding by a member of the New York Mafia.

The events that follow are founded upon accounts in more than one book and several contemporary newspaper and magazine articles, but there is no single source, but all of the sources are credible and all of them confirm the events that followed. This is where the fate of Radio Caroline after the defeat of the Tory government on October 15, 1964, meets the rise of the New York control over Radio Caroline in London.

There are several threads at work.

One involves a change in the UK gambling laws which allowed the U.S. Mafia to move in with help from the British underworld, to become heavily involved with primarily London casinos. Another thread involves the Leach-Bernard partnership in New York with its links to both the Italian Mafia, and the non-Italian 'members' of this fraternity who were dubbed the 'Jewish Mafia'.

Just after the October 1964 UK General Election, Robin Leach arrived in London "to visit his parents in Perivale". At that moment in time, Allan Crawford's Radio Caroline in the South of England was about to face the challenge of Texas money which had been poured into Radio London, and it was about to go on the air.

Panic set in behind the scenes of both Radio Caroline stations. To the north that station had a mission which was also linked to developments on the Isle of Man, but to the south, Crawford's station was about to be destroyed by a version of McLendon's highly successful KLIF in Dallas, Texas.

The investors behind Radio Caroline had several agendas, and one involved Pye and its eye on a lucrative need for broadcasting equipment, if the Tory government had licensed the nearly 200 sponsored commercial radio stations waiting to go on the air. That dream was over with the win by the socialist Labour Party. However, their aims and ambitions in the Isle of Man were still alive.

This is where the fate and fortune of Iain Calder from Slamannan, which is a village just outside of Falkirk in Scotland, met with the fate and fortune of Robin Leach and the murky and rocky road of chance followed by Radio Caroline. Unlike most of the other offshore radio stations whose origins, once revealed, were relatively simple and straightforward, because Radio Caroline was more of a brand name without a corporate identity because its investors had differing interests but shared a common goal, by the end of 1964 half of the original game plan had been destroyed. So Iain Calder on page 139 of his autobiography, lets us in on an event that changed the course of Radio Caroline in the south as it was about to enter the New Year of 1965:

Remember, George Bernard claimed that "Reggie Crawford" (Robin Leach), had gone to visit his parents in Perivale, but Iain Calder describes another event:

"Robin had emigrated from England to New York before he was twenty-one and impressed the 'Enquirer' news executives with his drive and ability as a freelance reporter. Still in his twenties and now an 'Enquirer' veteran, Robin returned to London on vacation just as I was beginning my career with the paper. That is when I first met him."

I should mention here that Iain Calder later fired Robin Leach, but that was some time after Iain Calder began his management climb that eventually took him to the top post of the 'National Enquirer' at its offices in Miami, Florida. Back to Iain's account of his first meeting with Robin Leach:

This was essentially a rescue plan for Radio Caroline South, although it also applied to Radio Caroline North as well, and it centered upon two New York companies: One  company was called Trans Atlantic Features, and that would be used by Leach as a 'front' when conducting interviews for the 'National Enquirer'. When explanations were called for, Leach and his partner could claim that they represented the news division of Radio Caroline in New York. (Few in America understood that Radio Caroline was deemed to be a 'pirate' radio station by authorities in Europe.)

The other company was Trans Atlantic Entertainment Corporation, and it was a genuine operation, but with Mafia ties. It was via TEAC that WMCA became involved with Radio Caroline using its 'Good Guys' format, and TEAC also had ties to Morris Levy who hired Jack Spector of WMCA to present his sponsored Roulette Records Show. From all of this came many other promotional ties including one of getting Ronan O'Rahilly on to the ABC-TV network show 'To Tell The Truth'. Because the 'Caroline Kennedy Hoax' had not yet been created, no mention was made on that TV show about this fable, but its invention was to allow Robin Leach to gain access to Bobby Kennedy by claiming to represent a British commercial radio station that was named after his niece. Bobby Kennedy 'fell' for the ruse that Radio Caroline had an international new bureau!

The original plan by Robin Leach was to create a sensational news story in which Bobby Kennedy endorsed Irish independence and slagged-off the British occupiers, and he would do so on St Patrick's Day! Just a few years later this theme erupted into a full scale war led by the Irish Republican Army who gained a lot of their funding and weapons from Irish-American sources.

The plan was quite insidious and it does raise some questions about what other interests were being served since Robin Leach does acknowledge a connection to Ronan O'Rahilly as being the source of 'inspiration' for this idea. At the time, IRA bombings on the UK mainland were a distant event, but this is when the O'Rahilly connection to the Dublin uprising was embellished and brought into play. More than this, several sources indicate a sinister overtone behind the faked St Patrick's Day broadcast over Radio Caroline.

A St Patrick's Day dinner was held in London and attended by the new Prime Minister Harold Wilson with Ronan O'Rahilly in attendance. The Robin Leach and Bobby Kennedy tape was played over the loudspeaker system of that event and Bobby Kennedy began by addressing Harold Wilson, and acknowledging Ronan O'Rahilly! Having listened to the speech by Bobby Kennedy, it is obvious that it parallels the speech given in Ireland by his by then murdered brother John at a time when Ronan O'Rahilly was off on his mission to Houston on behalf of Allan Crawford in June 1963.

Robin Leach hoped to ambush everyone with a major story that would create international embarrassment when splashed across the front page of the weekly 'National Enquirer'. But before he could do this he was 'scooped' by a major U.S. daily newspaper which explained to the staff of Bobby Kennedy that he had been 'set-up' by the 'National Enquirer', the daily paper also reported that Radio Caroline was a 'pirate' station operating in defiance of the new Labour government of Harold Wilson. All of this had the possibility of creating international tensions involving the USA, the UK and Ireland, and had this taken place during 'The Troubles', there is no doubt that everyone would understand why the Labour government had to shut down Radio Caroline!

There is a lot more to all of this and it will be revealed in due course.

However, as a footer, before Robin Leach hit the big time as host of the TV show 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous', he began a syndicated pop newspaper called GO. He did this in conjunction with WMCA, and Leach quickly added many other stations such as WFUN in Miami, until its masthead proclaimed that it had become "the largest circulation of any pop weekly".

Back in New York, with TFA-TAEC in full swing and out of the glare of the British news media, Morris Levy and has contacts with both the 'Jewish Mafia' and the Italian Cosa Nostra, opened the doors to WMCA, and then to placing Ronan O'Rahilly on an edition of the ABC-TV network show 'To Tell the Truth'.

In addition to the amendments to this site which I announced in my last blog, several more have been made, and this includes the addition of our own Timeline. You can find this addition at the conclusion of the page 'Who We Are' which has been revised to place items in a proper time flow sequence.

I will return later with Timeline items as part of our new format to explain who and why Radio Caroline was created in 1964, and because it is totally different from anything you have ever read before, it will be revealed by linked fragments, and not as a single addition to this blog. Although some would prefer to see a one-glance overview, because this new information challenges everything you ever thought you knew about Radio Caroline, it is necessary to use a court room approach by laying foundations to new evidence, otherwise shrill cries will arise from the choir of trolls who have been brainwashed in the manner of all cults to only believe and accept what their leader tells them.

Although this site began in response to a particular book, it has now evolved into a place where the true story about Radio Caroline will be published and you will learn who created it in 1964, and why they created it.

Because the scope of this site includes the essence of what will become a book called 'Radio-Noir' that includes a knowledge of geographical locations and the interaction of many people who have remained outside the existing storyline of Radio Caroline, new features have been added.

They include:

GEOPOLITICS - Which covers the inter-connectivity of mass media management and international cross-border broadcasting from offshore. Maps will show readers locations mentioned in the text, and their connectivity.

​TIMELINE OF EVENTS - This will place activities within the context of time and therefore in relation to other events that may or may not be directly related, but never-the-less they are events which do have an impact on the story, and therefore they must be taken into consideration.

BIOFRAG - This is a proprietary library of biographical fragments from inter-connecting lives. In other words it is not intended to be an an exhaustive biography of any one person, but it is intended to show the background of individuals named in the storyline.

WHO WE ARE - This page explains more about the three people (called 'The Trio'), and the narrator who are all responsible for this site.

BLOG - This is the ongoing story line in diary format.

COMMENTS - This is a separate Forum for a discussion about this work. It is not open to comments that are irrelevant or frivolous.

GET IN TOUCH - This page offers readers a method of person-to-person contact. 

Tomorrow I will return to the story of timeline which eventually led to the creation of Radio Caroline in 1964. Right now I am in the process of revising the WHO  WE ARE page to make it clear who is editing this blog and how other members of 'The Trio' relate to it.

I don't know who wrote the script about the life of Ronan O'Rahilly which was then spoken aloud today for the world to hear, but there were at least two major problems with what was uttered in the name of all that is pure and true: Lies were part of the package!

If you have ever had to arrange a funeral, then you know that there are certain parts of the script that are left to someone other than the person who will utter the words out loud.

​Since the speaker admitted to having little contact with Ronan O'Rahilly, the speaker was not at fault.

But somebody was!

​​[LISTEN TO THE LIE BY CLICKING ON THE VIDEO LINK ABOVE!] 

If you look at the masthead of this web page you will see a reference to Robin Leach and the 1965 point of origination of this lie. I have not yet got around to explaining in great detail how and why this lie was manufactured, but in due course, I will.

Now before a number of people start jumping up and down to defend the now deceased Ronan O'Rahilly, remember you did not do this for the legless, blinded and abused Allan Crawford who died alone in a nursing home in Wales. Yet it was from Allan Crawford that Ronan O'Rahilly stole the limelight and the glory.

How about the departed Don Pierson? He was mocked by Johnnie Walker, and yet, Don Pierson was the creator of the stations that the BBC ripped off to create its own Radio One and Radio Two. But Don Pierson has gone unremembered by the same people praising Ronan O'Rahilly.

This is such a sick game being played by the trolls who are trumpeting the falsity that "Caroline continues" and wrapping their arms around a 'tribute' written by Malcolm Smith that all but calls Ronan O'Rahilly a con man. I would be most offended by that 'tribute', but it seems that the trolls either can't read or they cannot comprehend what they are reading.

The words "Convince a man against his will, He's of the same opinion still", have been quoted by many people, and what inspired Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) to utter them, is anybody's guess, but they are true never-the-less. So it is with the claims of Ronan O'Rahilly who has taken falsity to his grave via a pulpit shown on a worldwide web cam.

However, there is another saying derived from Shakespear's 'The Merchant of Venice (1596): ".... at the length truth will out."

".... History has turned the page, uh huh .... The beat goes on, the beat goes on .... La de da de de, la de da de da ..." But now that "history has turned the page with the death of Ronan O'Rahilly on April 20, 2020 ...." what does that imply about the pages of history?

The trolls who have come to life on and after March 27, 1964 were too young to know the story of Radio Caroline, and so they are unable to recall events that took place at that time. They rely upon others to tell them what happened.

We call that passing on of events that are supposed to have taken place, a recital of history.

But contemporaneously with those events, for a time, Ronan O'Rahilly was paid as an interpreter for mass media to explain "the real story" with which most reporters could fill their news columns and broadcast versions on the airwaves. Ronan O'Rahilly claimed that he was telling the truth about what had taken place on March 27, 1964, which by the way, was two years before Sonny and Cher recorded 'The Beat Goes on'.

Ronan O'Rahilly died yesterday and Malcolm Smith (who calls himself Peter Moore), created a strange tribute to him on a domain web site that he calls 'Radio Caroline' (http://www.radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html), but which is totally unrelated to Radio Caroline 1964-1967. Someone posted it under the name of 'Mourner' on my Comments Forum.

I had to verify that this was not a sick-joke wind-up and therefore I went to the source site, just in case. But it is genuine and so here are excerpts from Malcolm Smith's script, with highlighting added by me:

"Ronan O'Rahilly 21st May 1940 – 20th April 2020.

I first met Ronan at a protest March in 1970, being delighted to shake his hand. Sixteen years passed before we met again when having taken on some tasks for the station we were both in a basement office in Covent Garden where he viewed me with caution and suspicion and maybe always did. Ronan identified me as an incorrigible chatterbox while he kept conversation to a minimum, stating 'there is no obligation to divulge information just for the sake of doing so'. ....

Chris Moore suggested that for Ronan, life was a game where the subject matter was immaterial only that he would see a situation where money or a possession might be available, when he would employ his persuasive skills so that the money or possession became his. Then the game was won and it was time for the next game.

Ronan was also the master of the put down, made more cruel by his deadpan delivery. At a .... social event, neither of us really wanting to be there, he espied one time Caroline DJ Keith Skues who in 1967 had quickly taken the chance to join the BBC. He was selling copies of his book Pop Went The Pirates. With an anger undimmed by the passage of 25 years, Ronan explained how Keith had deserted as soon as things became difficult. His actual words were far more harsh than that and I hoped that Skues would not approach us but he did. .... 'Ronan baby, when did we last meet, it must be twenty years ago'. 'Probably', said Ronan. 'Ronan baby, we should not leave it so long next time'. "Why not?', said O' Rahilly.

From Surrey he had me give him a ride home in a splendid Range Rover that I had borrowed. He was convinced that it was mine and that maybe I had bought it from my Caroline earnings which of course were nil. All the way to Chelsea and in many different ways he tried to get me to admit that the car was mine finally or seemingly letting the subject drop before saying "So, how much did you pay for it?". There was no malice in the question, just that his mind would not compute that a person would work for so long without expecting any reward.

On various journeys, our subjects covered were strange and delightful. When a person might drop into to conversation that they had bought a new lawn mower, Ronan would talk about the time he bought an experimental nuclear spaceship, or his promotion of an engine that ran on water, which of course it did not. 

.... Conversely on the Saturday of the 1989 raid on the Ross he called me when I was veering between despair and furious anger. "Look at it this way" he said calmly and slowly, "It could have been just another boring Saturday afternoon for you". But later he became so guarded as to only hold conversations in moving vehicles or on deserted railway platforms. We dragged his doomed legal case concerning the raid to one law firm after another, often having to lodge cash deposits into court to keep the case active. Ronan really thought that he was playing poker with HM Government and that if he kept raising the stakes they would blink first. They did not and the money was lost.

For a man who lived on his wits, dementia was the cruellest blow. (sic) .... A clever man, sometimes verging on genius. Eccentric of course, sometimes unscrupulous, but suddenly kind and warm hearted. A rogue maybe, but a charismatic and loveable rogue. ...."

I have deleted loony references to his many claims to his own self-importance which were derived from either the achievements of other people, or plucked out of thin air as mere daydreams.

To my mind this is a very strange 'tribute' to Ronan O'Rahilly by Malcolm Smith, because if I was the living subject of these words I might be tempted to conclude that the writer was mocking me as a total fool and con-man. On the other hand, that is exactly what Ronan O'Rahilly was!

One thing is certain: Ronan O'Rahilly did not create Radio Caroline and he had absolutely no impact on the development of British broadcasting. Ronan O'Rahilly was a fraud who fooled a lot of people and some of them have created a quasi-religious cult around him.

If remembrances should have been made to offshore broadcasting pioneers who did influence British broadcasting, they should have recalled Allan James Crawford; Don Pierson and Ted Allbuery.

You might think that with all the books, magazines, newspaper articles plus radio and television documentaries that have been published, that someone would by now be able to tell the authentic story about the beginnings of offshore commercial radio in the British Isles, or even how Radio Caroline came into existence. But the sad fact is, they have not done so to date!

What does exist are lots of people copying what other writers have written and just adding to existing confusion. One of the best sources remains official governmental investigations trying to accomplish the same thing, but because their finding often clashed with the pop version of events that was itself intentionally obfuscated to mislead, the pop writers (such as Rusling), just added fuel to the fire of confusion. Reconciling the incomplete official investigative reports with the pop stories only results in a great big muddle.

There is only one alternative and that is begin anew by analyzing what does exist, and then discarding that which is obviously untrue.

The other question that remains to be answered, is where does this story begin?

Some want to follow the story of broadcasting from ships that takes them back into the beginnings of broadcasting itself, but it is totally unrelated to the question of how and why Radio Caroline was created? So how about identifying one key person, such as Allan James Crawford, and following his biographical trek through time?

Although Allan Crawford did give a number of interviews in later life, he did so from memory, which by then was fuzzy. Another problem with those interviews is that there seems to be certain aspects of his life that Allan Crawford did not want to reveal to the public.

Because he did not publish his memoirs, the next best thing is to turn to his brother-in-law Bernard Harte who did write and publish a book about the history of radio in general (Harte, Bernard. When Radio Was the Cat's Whiskers . Rosenberg Publishing. Kindle Edition); which also includes a recital about his relationship with Allan Crawford. Unfortunately his recital contains "fill" material which he has obviously incorporated from other sources. However, Bernard Harte did relate some aspects of Crawford's life that are informative in a general way.

"Allan was born and raised in the New South Wales city of Newcastle. I first met him at the Crawford family home in the suburb of Merewether when I was courting his sister Jean, soon to be my wife. It was during the war years. .... Allan was then .... employed .... as a sub-accountant." I have redacted Harte's text to the salient points of interest to us.

"Three years later he was flying bombers over Germany. When the war ended, Allan elected to take his discharge in England to enable him to study music at the famous Guildhall. When he was in London he happened to meet Ralph Peer, principal of the US Southern Music Publishing Company. Peer was about to set up an office in Sydney and offered Allan the job of manager, impressing on him the fact that he would have to operate on a shoestring budget, at least for the first year. Allan accepted."

From this we know that Allan Crawford was in London following WWII, and he studied music, met Ralph Peer who offered him the job of opening an office for Southern Music in Australia.

"In the mid-fifties he went overseas on a business trip .... While he was in London the manager there died and Allan landed his job, which went smoothly until Ralph Peer passed away. His widow clashed with Allan—end of story."

Harte tells us why Allan Crawford came back to England and took over the London office of Southern Music, and it may be that Ralph Peer became ill; his wife took over the U.S. headquarters then Crawford fell out with her and left, after which Ralph Peer died. However, the events that then took place in Crawford's life are not properly recorded by Harte, because some basic information is clearly in error.

By December 1999, Allan James Crawford who became afflicted with diabetes, which resulted in the amputation of one leg and confined him to both a wheelchair "and a rather lonely life". Then he lost his other leg and his eyesight and he spent his remaining days in a nursing home bed in Wales. But shortly before he died a person who his brother-in-law met and only identifies as an "Englishman" had befriended Allan Crawford and then stole £20,000 by forging his signature.

".... this very talented man, who bore his illness and disability with fortitude and dignity, left us suddenly as the result of a bout of pneumonia. Before he died he dictated his life story on tape. I’m sure his autobiography will be a bestseller." Unfortunately this recording seems to have disappeared and it has not, as far as we are aware, been published to date.

However, it does appear that Allan James Crawford did leave Peer-Southern in London on August 17, 1959, and that date provides us with the start of a timeline leading into events surrounding the birth of offshore commercial-sponsored radio broadcasting to the British Isles.

The next part of this existing mystery, is to document from all of the conflicting pieces of information currently in circulation, the movements of Allan James Crawford in connection with the birth of British offshore radio. Part of the mystery about this man may become clearer when we follow the end of Radio Caroline South and the disposal of its ship 'Mi Amigo'. Because if we can work backwards in time from known facts, perhaps we can then link them to other facts in evidence that are coated with many bogus interpretations and claims.

If we can establish what is known as fact, then we can discern what is true and what is false about the claims currently in circulation. Having that kind of information as our guide, it should be possible to follow both individual biographies and company records to form a proper timeline of events.

George Hare (left) seems like a good starting point because following the death of Radio Caroline he was working for Phillip Solomon in Dublin who was milking the twin transmitting ships until they gave up the ghost and Wijsmuller called them home to Amsterdam. (http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/towed1c.htm).

According to George, his boss did not tell him what his ultimate game-plan was, but if anyone thought they were getting the better of Phillip Solomon, he obviously set out to prove that they were wrong. His idea was to pay for airtime in order to plug his record label, and that is what he did. Since there was no formal structure after August 14, 1967 to the entity which called itself Radio Caroline, all Solomon had to do was keep the stations on the air without bothering about the maintenance of the ships themselves, but Wisjmuller was not similarly persuaded, and they eventually pulled the plug.

This is where George Hare leads us to Wijsmuller and the financial structure behind that Dutch entity, or at least the branch of it that connected to both the mv Caroline, and the mv Mi Amigo. That trail leads us to the Republic of Panama.

One person who was always perplexed about the people he worked for was former Marconi engineer George Saunders. He was Chief Engineer on the mv Mi Amigo (Radio Caroline South), and sometimes 'Doctor Fix-It Quick' on the eponymous ship that was home to Radio Caroline North. He was also the stand-in for John Howard Gilman, who, with his secretary Dorothy 'Kitty' Black at her desk in Caroline House,  ran more than just the engineering side of things at 6 Chesterfield Gardens.

By calling itself the 'Offshore Radio Museum', it might be reasonably expected by a visitor to that cyber site, that they would find a collection of facts about the subject of offshore radio:

Not so.

If Paul Rusling is but one in a long line of self-publishers and careless mainstream book publishers who have issued fiction in the name of fact, then the 'Offshore Radio Museum' has to be associated with that 'Wikipedia' class of unreliable cyber information about maritime broadcasting stations.

For instance, enter the words 'Radio Atlanta' and this is what you find [with my notations added]:

"In 1960 an Australian  ex-wartime bomber pilot and music publisher, Allan Crawford, established a business in London managing minor artists and producing cover versions of hit songs on his own record labels." [A few entries back I had written that Allan Crawford left Peer-Southern on August 17, 1959 following a dispute with the widow of Ralph Peer. However, because of the fuss that people like Scottg were creating over dates, I discovered that Ralph Peer died on January 19, 1960, so I will have to undertake a more thorough review to discover exactly when and why Crawford left Peer-Southern.]

"Crawford had, until 1959, worked both in Britain and Australia as Managing Director of a music publishing company - Southern Music - before leaving to establish his own business, Merit Music Publishing Ltd. which produced records on labels including  Rocket, Sabre, Crossbow and Carnival. .... Crawford set about convincing  a number of wealthy and influential backers of the commercial potential for launching a radio station to challenge the BBC monopoly. The result was the formation of Project Atlanta Ltd., which initially had 38 separate investors each holding anything between just 50 and 10,000 of the company's 150,000 £1 shares." [Now this is where this cyber museum and Wikipedia throw their arms around each other! Project Atlanta Ltd was not incorporated until August 1, 1963, and its directors did not include any of those "wealthy backers" that it came to have by the end of 1964. But that is not what this cyber "Museum" says:] 

"By early summer 1962 Allan Crawford was aware that the Scandinavian offshore stations (with the exception of Radio Syd) were about to close because of new legislation coming into effect at the beginning of August to outlaw them. Crawford had closely followed events surrounding these Scandinavian stations and he negotiated a deal with the American backers of Radio Nord to purchase that station's vessel, Magda Maria, complete and ready to broadcast, together with the entire contents of the fully equipped land-based studios in Stockholm." [The problem for the cyber 'Museum' is that no such deal was concluded because Crawford did not have the kind of money necessary to make such a deal.]

"In addition Crawford was interested in taking on some of the Radio Nord technical staff and marine crew to continue running the Magda Maria and all its equipment. The prospect of this sale to Project Atlanta had, in part, led to the early closure of Radio Nord - in June 1962 rather than at the end of July when the Scandinavian legislation came into effect." [According to Bill Weaver, the man who shut down Radio Nord, there was a far more sinister reason for shutting it down, and that was compounded, according to Weaver with the theft of company assets in Stockholm.]

"Bob Thompson (one of the American backers of Radio Nord) and Allan Crawford reached a preliminary agreement for the purchase by Project Atlanta of the Magda Maria and all the associated radio equipment and even agreed a delivery date for the ship to drop anchor in the Thames Estuary. But before anchoring off the British coast it was agreed that the Magda Maria would go into port for a complete technical and marine overhaul." [Now that is a statement by someone who is unaware of Bill Weaver, because he had full control of the ship and its radio equipment, and his base of operations was a hotel in London.

So, this cyber 'Museum' is stating as fact, something that is factually impossible.

This "deal" that is being supposedly being negotiated by 'Project Atlanta Limited' in 1962, is allegedly taking place one year before the company was registered!

But none of this troubles the script writer for the cyber 'Museum', and so far, until right this minute, right here and right now, no one has laughed this cyber 'Museum' to scorn.

But just to make sure everyone understands that the cyber 'Museum' is talking about 1962 and not 1963, their listing continues with more errors!]

"Even before Radio Nord had closed rumours of the sale of the Magda Maria started to circulate in Sweden during the early part of June 1962 and the station's owners became very nervous that the authorities would attempt in some way to seize the vessel, possibly if she sailed through the narrow channel between Sweden and Denmark. These fears proved unfounded, however, because after lying at anchor for a few days following Radio Nord's closure, the Magda Maria successfully slipped away from Scandinavian waters sailing quietly through The Oresund and into the international waters of the North Sea."
​
"The Magda Maria docked at El Ferrol in northern Spain on 2nd August 1962 where a complete overhaul of the vessel took place as part of the agreement with Project Atlanta. The renovated ship left El Ferrol on 14th September 1962, giving her destination as Dover, England and a few days later she dropped anchor, as agreed, in the Thames Estuary."

Now you wonder, so what?

Well, the cyber 'Museum' seems to dwell in a cyber bubble, unaware of events such as the aftermath of the 'Bay of Pigs' and the US embargo of Cuba, or that Bobby Kennedy had asked for the ship as part of 'Operation Mongoose'.

While the anoraks were busy putting Rusling's 'bible' at the top of the Garry Stevens' Forum, and keeping it there, they were spending waking hours attacking the people behind this blog. Not the issues, just the people, and one person in particular.

Is this their means of distracting from the obvious truth that the Malcolm Smith concoction that calls itself 'Radio Caroline', is based upon nothing more than Rusling's fraud, the nonsense on the cyber 'Museum', and all of those ridiculous 'Jimmy Ross' and 'Caroline Kennedy' myths?

The real problem is that no one before now has tried to set down a definitive account of all of the interrelated and interconnected events that took place between 1964 and 1967, because no one has even set down a definitive account of what exactly happened in 1959 that took events up to the year 1964.

That is what is being worked out here, because CNBC; Voice of Slough and GBOK which is followed by GBLN, are at the moment a confusing sea of ventures that also swirl around the company registered in April 1960 as CBC (Plays) Ltd. But what was that company in 1960: who incorporated it; why did they incorporate it, and why was it specified as a company whose main business was 'plays'?

This is what I will be documenting on this blog, as well as the new Timeline page that I have just created. If these loopy anoraks would spend more time discussing the origins of Radio Caroline and less time attacking me personally, then something might be achieved. Sadly it was when 'The Trio' extended an invitation to Paul Rusling that he merely stole what he wanted to produce yet another deceitful and fraudulent book.

On the other hand, in forthcoming issues of this blog, I will be documenting the real events referred to here.

When I began looking at the mountain of evidence that has been collected, it become obvious that the first thing I had to do was create a new integrated timeline.

I have also come to believe that by shutting out the panorama of world events and burying himself in the tiny little world of fans fused to the idea of broadcasting from ships, people like Paul Rusling not only missed out on the big picture, but they also missed out on the inter-connectivity of the story about offshore radio. No wonder Paul Rusling [and other authors] have fallen for the myths and hoaxes put in their way! So today I have been working on codes for various links; moving pages and creating a place for an integrated timeline.

The person called 'Scottg', who seems to be located in the southeast of England, has been very noisy and somewhat threatening over the subject of Pye; a company called Faraday, and a station called GBOK. What he failed to understand is what Allan Crawford once told a member of 'The Trio' when he recited details about the inter-connectivity of Radio Nord's owners with the owners of Radio Veronica and its offshoot CNBC, and how those entities became entangled with John Thompson's 'Voice of Slough', and how he became the antagonist of his former partner and conman Arnold Swanson whose GBOK became involved with Pye, before Pye became involved with Allan Crawford; who became involved with Dorothy Black, and all of this was being documented by the British Crown and its media control arm called the General Post Office.

Now as if this was not enough, while all that was going on in the British Isles, related matters were taking place across the Atlantic Ocean which exploded in a rogue split within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who teamed up with Cuban expats and their abysmal attempt to invade Cuba and topple Fidel Castro.  Then, as the precursor to the advent of Radio Caroline, some of the people involved with Radio Nord and subsequently Radio Atlanta, also became entangled with events that led to President John F. Kennedy having part of his brain splattered over his wife one sunny day while driving through Dallas, Texas.

Finally, add to all of that the building of the Berlin Wall, threats of the nuclear annihilation of the inhabitants of the British Isles which had become home to the U.S.A.'s Polaris nuclear submarine fleet based in Scotland. They were on station almost next door to Radio Mercur where they attempted to bottle-up part of the Soviet Fleet within the Baltic Sea. To know what I am referring to it helps to have an atlas to hand with vital place names market upon it. Therefore I am also in the process of creating a separate page to show these locations. I have also circled the locations that are of importance to me, personally.

Once I have this bit of housekeeping underway, I will begin by filling in details of this new and universal Timeline - which is already linked as a page at the top of this blog page.

Having had the opportunity to go through the mountains of collected data from researched topics that all began by curiosity arising from the subject of offshore 'pirate' radio broadcasting, and then looking at another mountain of books about this subject, and that is in addition to the vast back-numbers of newspaper and magazine articles, not ignoring all of those documentaries both on radio and television, well it is enough to confuse anyone looking at this topic for the first time.

Any person trying to make sense of all this would need to self-isolate and shut out the world to look at all this material afresh. But who has time for that, in this busy world? 

However, thanks to the Chinese gift to the world of their pandemic, nearly everything has shut down in fear, of what is not very clear. Sounds like the old Buffalo Springfield record from 1967 called 'For What It's Worth', which begins with: "There's something happening here; What it is ain't exactly clear ..." I lean to the famous explanation by President Roosevelt on March 3, 1933, when he said: ".... the only thing we have to fear is ... fear itself ...." and that fear has led to what he further defined as: ".... nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

That digression brings me to another one. It is a published academic article by members of 'The Trio', which begins with these words:
"On April 6, 1917, the United States of America began assembling a fighting force to engage in WWI. This American Expeditionary Force would eventually total almost 5 million men under arms, of whom 116,000 would die and 230,000 would be wounded when combat came to an end the following year. As if this was not enough mayhem for any generation, an influenza pandemic swept the world during this conflict and it killed more people in weeks than the sum total that died in combat during The Great War." See: http://foundthreads.com/04.html

So, thanks to the Chinese dictatorship and their Wuhan lab; plus the wonders of the Internet (which is still functioning), and to memory sticks; the cloud, and a laptop; I have been able to sequester myself without worrying about the time, or a schedule, and I have immersed myself into a bygone time: the years of the Cold War following the aftermath of World War II. It is from within that same time-frame that the sub-theme of offshore commercial broadcasting to the British Isles began to emerge, and finally it found success, albeit of a very limited duration, between the years 1964 to 1967.

But that story line does not begin a vacuum, and nor is it a story that is merely about pop records and a market of  baby-boomers emerging as teens. They are fringe players, but the vast amount of publications and audio-video material created about that era would have you believe that it all took place in some form of surrealistic self-isolation from the real world decades before the Chinese pulled their pandemic stunt.

In fact, those teenage baby-boomers of the Sixties, formed a small cultural part of a bigger picture that was the offshore radio  world of yesterday.

After finding more questions than answers in relation to solving the immediate mystery behind that single paragraph on page 276 of 'Radio Man', and then digging into the past of a former lightship that was earmarked in the press to become an offshore radio station; it became necessary to look for a universal time line into which everything fits, and more importantly, to look for a catalyst: a pebble or a stone that might have been thrown into a pond that began the ripples that simultaneously began to emerge in all directions. But what if more than one stone or pebble was thrown into that pond of time, and what if they were thrown in at the same moment in time?

Other writers have followed surface trends such as anecdotal cameo reminiscences by former disc jockeys, or even various hangers-on whose embellished tales of what they claim to have overheard, or witnessed, forms a new narrative; albeit a narrative without demonstrable authenticity. That is not what is being constructed on this site now that I have the time (thanks to Wuhan) and the resources (thanks to 'The Trio'), and a place to spread out and analyze all of this (thanks to my uncle.)

So let me establish a major first point: It is not a single stone that is being cast into a still pond; because the pond is not still. Other people are simultaneously casting their stones into that same body of water. Therefore I have to define what metaphorical body of water these stones are being cast into. In this instance it seems to be the vast Atlantic Ocean which is by no means still, and which ultimately connects the continent of North America to the archipelago that forms the British Isles.

Reading the story of Ralph Peer (in 'Creating Country Music'), it became rapidly apparent that his life connected with more the world of 'primitive' musicians, because he also connected to the embryonic record industry; the stirrings of broadcasting, and the re-writing of copyright law to apply to printed sheet music and its performance on record. Not only that, Peer's influence has been reflected on worldwide. But Ralph Peer was not alone in having this kind of influence; in broadcasting there have been men such as David Sarnoff and John Reith who caused the medium to be shaped according to their views. However, all of them interrelated with the world of money and the political powers that controlled the controllers.

So money does seem to be a worthwhile theme to follow, as per that exhortation in 'All the President's Men', and since by happenstance, or serendipity, right at this moment I happen to be looking at political-money documents retrieved from the British National Archives at Kew, that is where I will begin. These documents also connect up with the story of GBOK, so if, like the person who calls himself 'Scottg' you are wondering when I will tell you about Farraday Electronics, the answer is, I will get to it, when I get to it. But unlike people such as 'Scottg', my approach will remain that of a person presenting a case before a court of law, and before moving to point number two, it is necessary to establish point number one.

If you haven't heard the routine by Steve Martin many years ago when he dealt with this issue of establishing the first item of evidence before moving on to the second point by simply mentioning the first point in passing, then you should listen to this:
 https://youtu.be/zXmQW_aqBks?list=RDzXmQW_aqBks

Today I spent time bringing about a change from book review to the first draft of material that will be used in a new book. Because the academic project is still going ahead, 'The Trio' have hived-off the commercial side which I have taken over because I have access to the same research material.

Therefore I will not be making any more additions to this blog today.

One final note. I am receiving comments from a person who has his own idea about what I should be doing. He also posts these ideas elsewhere in a form of blackmail: "If you won't tell them, I will." But I am not interested in his goals and objectives, and therefore this blog has its own agenda.

If you would like to contribute information that is documented, and which might be valuable if it is something not known to 'The Trio', please send it to me. However, please keep in mind that this blog is not beholden to anyone but me, and of course 'The Trio' I work with.

Yesterday I acknowledged the help given to 'The Trio' by David Dudley [left] whose son Simon bought the former wooden construct lightship 'Lady Dixon', after it had been rotting away following many years of neglect. David Dudley discovered that this hulk had at one time been the proposed home of GBOK, which was intended to become an offshore radio station, and Dave became fascinated by the history of this hulk.

Today I want to put a lot of information in order of sequence that other writers have ignored; either because they were specializing on a specific aspect in the life of one of the participants, or as in the case of Paul Rusling's 'The Radio Caroline Bible', because he did not understand the subject he was writing about which is why he avoided all mention of GBOK in his 'Bible of Bilge'!

You read that right! In the softback version of Rusling's book you can search the Index for any reference to GBOK, and you won't find one. You can flip through the pages to see if it is there, and if it was missed out of the Index. Well, if it is there, I could not find it. Can you?

So what did Rusling do with this gap in offshore broadcasting history? Well, he just pretended that it was not there! Then what? Well, by eliminating GBOK he also eliminated the 'hook' that Pye latched on to, because Radio Caroline really came out of GBOK, and not Radio Atlanta, because Atlanta and Caroline were really two sides of the same coin, but each side was different.

However, the story behind-the-story of GBOK, as well as its inter-connectivity with the start of Radio Caroline, is a vital part of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, and if that thread is left unaddressed, it leads to invented links such as the ones that Rusling attached in his make-believe and cobbled-together series of fables. In fact, the more that his 'bible' is analyzed, the more impossible it becomes to try to correct his many misspellings; typographical errors and just made-up nonsense!

Rusling's bilge book does more harm than it does good, and yet, a little army of trolls stand behind their cult leader Rusling to defend his fiction. Why, because Rusling is supporting Malcolm Smith's claim that the tiny station he represents is the latest incarnation of Radio Caroline, except that it is not. Radio Caroline died in 1967, never to return again.

Others have adopted that name for other projects, but they are not related and neither is there a continuous timeline of broadcasting from 1967 to the present day. Rusling's book is built upon plagiarized texts which have been twisted to the point of total distortion. That is one of the main reasons why it became very necessary for 'The Trio' to distance themselves from everything connected to Paul Rusling due to the long-term harm that he has set in motion.

Therefore in this blog, the time that follows is based not upon the fantasy published by Rusling, but upon the actual and documented timeline established after decades of research, and which owes its origins to work performed by 'The Trio', with help from many people such as Dave Dudley.

In the next thread I will bring into focus several different people who were active during the same period of time, and I will reveal how they interacted with each other, learned from each other and helped to propel events that led to the creation of Radio Caroline. This will include the story of GBOK.

There have been many people who have used and abused the work of 'The Trio' and there have been a few who have shared their own resources and worked together for a common cause.

Dave Dudley was such a man.

Dave's son Simon bought the former 'Lady Dixon' lightship which he began converting into a home. His father became very interested in the history of the hulk and 'The Trio' began sharing information with David.​ He told 'The Trio' what he had discovered about the proposed home of GBOK, and 'The Trio'  shared their information with him.

Then tragedy struck and 'The Trio' received this note from SImon:
"Unfortunately, due to David being taken ill, he will not be responding to this email address for the foreseeable future.  Thank you.'

On Monday May 16, 2016 another email was received from Simon:
".... can you please take David off your email list for the moment as he is in hospital in a coma after a tragic accident last friday."

Finally, on Sunday July 17, 2016 this last email was received from SImon:
".... thank you so much for your kind words, they mean a lot. Sadly i think it is now a matter of days as David pulled out his feed tube in the week and the decision was made not to replace it. He is on morphine in case of any pain but i think he is ready to leave us. Will you please pass on our thanks to everyone else."

Another door to research had closed.

However, before David became ill, a lot of progress had been achieved in trying to establish a true chronology of GBOK and how it related to the "Voice of Slough", and threads of a story that had never been published before, began to emerge. I am amending this thread so that it remains as its own acknowledgement about the contribution made by Dave Dudley whose input I shall no doubt be referring to later on.

The story of GBOK now moves to a new thread that will follow this one, but to complete this tribute to Dave Dudley, and to explain how and why he became involved with the hulk that he referred to as the 'Cormorant', please follow this very detailed thread:
https://www.shipsnostalgia.com/archive/index.php/t-53501.html

This is how that thread began on September 17, 2013 at 09:23:

"My son has recently bought the Cormorant, which has a chequered history. She was built in 1876/78 by the Victoria Shipbuilding Co., West Passage Cork, Ireland. She was 91 ft long, 21 ft wide and her draft was 11ft. She cost £7.500 to build and served on many Irish stations. Her construction was a composite of teak planking over Iron Frames. In 1942 she was sold to the Belfast Harbour Commissioners and renamed "Lady Dixon" after the Harbour Masters wife. .... Later in life she was destined to become a pirate radio station, but Customs and Excise intervened! Later she is reputed to have been moored at Pitsea and converted to a houseboat under her original title of Cormorant .... Now she is moored at Hoo near Rochester. Only one third of the above deck accommodation is habitable and below deck is in a poor state and bare ...."

David's many updated posts read like a story in itself, and therefore if you would like to know more about his involvement with this vessel, I encourage you to follow the thread I have listed. His last entry before going into hospital was on April 30, 2016.

Meanwhile, before I continue with the story of GBOK on my own thread, here is what David wrote on January 16, 2016 at 10:41 ....

"DavidD: Talking of detective work, Mervyn Hagger has been corresponding with me and given me a brand new take on pirate radio stations. He is firmly of the opinion that a lot of people have been and still are repeating myths originated for the specific purpose of creating obfuscation, and consequently everything from BBC to Wikipedia archives (which he reckons are always dodgy), are parroting back stuff that is entirely bogus. The real story of offshore radio is somewhat mind-boggling and it is not the story that the fans of offshore radio (1960-1968), think that it is.

"Arnold Swanson was Canadian by birth. He had no money and was a vacuum cleaner salesman and not an expert in anything - except conmanship. On top of which he was exposed in the British press as a fraud, and in Canada he was convicted of 'Saville-like' crimes and his wife divorced him.

"Thompson had spent time in Canada. There was obviously a split-off from Thompson by Swanson, but Thompson retained a lucrative underwriting radio sponsorship, while Swanson seems to have gained control of the Lady Dixon, while Thompson had a mere 70 ton motor boat. This and more from ‘proper’ researchers like Mervyn, Chris Edwards (Offshore Echos Magazine) and Jon Myers (Pirate Radio Hall of Fame). I very much welcome guidance from such stalwarts to keep me away from untruths and Chinese whispers, such as the often quoted origin of Cormorant – the Victoria Shipbuilding Co. I discovered that no such firm existed and she was built by the Cork Harbour Docks and Warehouse Company, who owned the Victoria dock.

"Mervyn sent me one tit-bit that Chris Edwards found during his research at the national Archives, Kew – I really must get down there! This is an extract from an official memo dated 13 February 1962.

"The Controller: Further to my report dated 5th February, 1962, on 6th February 1 received a press cutting from the Scottish edition of the "Sunday Pictorial, dated 4th February, 1962, from which it will be seen that Mr Arnold Swanson gave an interview to a reporter in which he said that he had invested £30,000 into the scheme for commercial broadcasting from a ship, that he had sold £100,000 worth of advertising time, that the broadcasting station would operate from a converted lightship flying the flag of Monaco and moored off Southend. The call sign of the station was stated to be 'GBOK'. As a result of this information I made enquiry of Trinity House and ascertained that four lightship vessels were sold in 1959. - J Johnstone.

"The memo goes on to detail investigation into the disposal of the Trinity House vessels – red herrings! Mr Johnstone also investigated Scottish Lights, to no avail. He missed out the real source – Irish Lights.

David."

Scottg is impatient. He wants me to hurry up and get past GBOK so that he can start reading about Radio Atlanta and Radio Caroline. I suppose if he has turned to page 29 (softback) in his copy of Rusling's 'The Radio Caroline Bible' and started to read "The first steps of Radio Caroline" just above a picure of Allan James Crawford, he has read the following at the bottom of the page:
"The BBC were very aware of developments in radio. They deployed two of their retired engineers to other offshore ventures to observe. These 'advisors' took on consultancy roles for Radio Veronica and for two embryonic projects set to broadcast to the UK, GBOK and GBLN."

If Scottg actually paid for his copy of Rusling's rubbish he should demand his money back without delay.

We bought our copy in order to perform this review of its contents, so we view it as a 'tool of the trade' to examine it for accuracy (it fails miserably), and for plagiarism (it excels in that)! But because Paul Rusling is not at all well versed in the history of offshore broadcasting, no matter what he claims, even when he steals his source material, he still manages to present a mixed-up and pathetic account of the subject. But then, Rusling admits that he does no research and that he hates studying books, so what should a reader expect of an author with such poor credentials?

Paul Rusling is a leader of the blind and he is taking them into that proverbial ditch. Not only that, they are paying him to mislead them! Now that is the mark of a 'good' con-man!

So what should Scottg expect to learn about this same period of time that is true, and which, to the very best of our knowledge, is accurate? We are always willing to stand corrected once proof is presented. That is why we are taking this so slowly and documenting everything.

That being the case, let us take another look at Rusling's words and ask some basic questions about the opening lines of page 28 (that end conclude with the quotation above):
"The first tentative steps to set up what was to become Radio Caroline were taken in early 1960 when New Zealand born music publisher Allan Crawford decided to leave the Australian Southern Music Group and set up his own music publishing business, Merit Music in London."

Well we begin by correcting the year when the story of Allan James Crawford took a turn in a different direction.

Next we correct the birth place of Allan James Crawford. He was born in Australia which is not a part of New Zealand.

Finally, Southern Music was a United States company with a very long and prestigious history that set up a branch in Australia. Then it set up a branch in London, England, and when its very famous founder died, Crawford fell out with his widow who had took over control of the company. It was then and for that reason that Crawford decided to start one of several businesses of his own.

Now since this is the opening paragraph to the beginning of Rusling's account of how Radio Caroline began, it is no wonder that at the bottom of the page his last paragraph is just as bad:
"The BBC were very aware of developments in radio. They deployed two of their retired engineers to other offshore ventures to observe. These 'advisors' took on consultancy roles for Radio Veronica and for two embryonic projects set to broadcast to the UK, GBOK and GBLN."

Since the BBC is an arm of the Crown corporation sole, and was at that time the product of the Crown's General Post Office (GPO), exactly who might have been aware of developments in radio at the BBC? Rusling does not say.

But Rusling does go on to claim that someone at the BBC: ".... deployed two of their retired engineers to other offshore ventures to observe."

Let's begin by looking at that word "deployed". It is a word often used by the military for sending troops on a mission, in which case the troops would not be retired military, but still serving in the military. Rusling's use of this word is a contradiction in itself because Rusling is claiming something that could not happen. Therefore, how could someone at the BBC order two of their retired engineers to do anything at all?

Well Rusling contradicts himself yet again by claiming that these two retired engineers are now working for the BBC as "advisors", and "advisors" to the BBC in that sort of capacity do not do so as unpaid volunteers.

But these individuals, says Rusling, are "double-dipping", because they "took on consultancy roles for Radio Veronica and for two embryonic projects set up to broadcast to the UK, GBOK and GBLN."

That is a mouthful.

So is Rusling saying that these two retired BBC engineers were rehired as BBC "advisers", who also began working for Radio Veronica; GBOK and GBOK?  Three more entities? They were busy old men (assuming they had retired at normal retirement age. That amounts to 4 sources of simultaneous income. Or is Rusling saying the GBOK and GBLN were part of Radio Veronica, which would mean 2 sources of income (BBC and Veronica.)

Or, what does Rusling mean?

Well he is the teacher so he should know what he means, but his readers will have great difficulty in trying to discover what is going on in his head. As I previously claimed, if you are following Rusling you are by now in the ditch with him. In other words Rusling has not the slightest clue what he is writing about, because what he has written is gibberish.

This is why it is so difficult to tell this story.

If readers had no idea of what Radio Caroline was, that would make the job of informing them a lot easier. But even when Rusling opens up the story about Radio Caroline, he does not know who Allan Crawford, is, where he was born or who he worked for. Then, when he concludes this same page he manages to contradict himself twice with a single paragraph.

For this and a multitude of related reasons I am going to take this recital very, very slowly and that means that Scottg won't get a quick overview because that is impossible. If I did, I end up spending more time in correcting what Rusling thinks that he knows, than telling in telling you what he does not know.

The solution?

Short and to the point blogs.

You may get more than one update per day, but from now on they are going to be concise and limited to specific points and very focused.

Please see the page 'WHO WE ARE' for an updated and expanded explanation about this blog.

I have received a couple of lengthy issue-related comments from Scottg. In essence he would like to move on with the timeline because he wonders if there is much more that can be written about GBOK. The answer is that there is a lot more that needs to be written about GBOK, because GBOK was John Stanley's initial link to forcing the creation of Radio Caroline.

Previously, a variety of tales have been spun that Allan Crawford and Kitty Black decided to start an offshore radio station, and then they met Ronan O'Rahilly who essentially ran off with their plans and raised his own money for his own station with help from a 'Jimmy Ross'. But all of that is sheer nonsense. Radio Caroline was not a spin-off from Radio Atlanta, if anything it was a spin-off of GBOK which was a spin-off from the 'Voice of Slough'.

Too many people have run off to write books without doing any research and consequently the story has become totally buried in make-believe tales. As I explained earlier, this work is progressing slowly like the presentation of court room evidence where foundations must be laid before new evidence is presented.

The crowd calling themselves anoraks are not interested in research, they are of the 'instant  gratification' tribe, so this site is not for them. However, I am in the process of moving the comments to another site and converting he Comments Section here to footnotes. I will also be creating a third site wherein the order of this blog will be reversed so that just like a book, the earliest posted entry will appear first, and not last.

This blog will however, continue as it is. Out of that third site a book will emerge, but it will entail rewrites of several posted entries on this blog, because this blog began as a book review.

Eventually I will address all of the points raised by Scottg, but this work cannot be hurried; it has to be methodical if it is to prove that everything published to date about Radio Caroline between the years 1964 to 1967 is mostly rubbish.

Remember, that the offshore radio story is but a small part of the geopolitical Cold War story that I will be unraveling. That won't appeal to the anoraks, although they may begin to pay more attention when the Kennedy family is revealed as one of the most dangerous and duplicitous and nepotistic tribes to take hold of the industrial-military complex that has governed the United States of America. Their saga is wrapped around the GBOK to Caroline episode that stretches from 1962 into 1963, and it is only derailed when John F. Kennedy has his head blown apart on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Then the CIA back room boys ramp up a war in Asia with interests connected to CIA, and which uses Allan Crawford to promote its agenda in Australia, once his broadcasting dream has ended.

​But the offshore radio story was never about Allan Crawford and it was even less connected to Ronan O'Rahilly.

Hopefully I will have more time tomorrow to explain the continuing story of GBOK and its relationship to Pye.

Are you following this blog?

If you are, I would like to hear from you either by the comments section or by email.

Because this blog began as a book review and has now moved on to explain the real origins of Radio Caroline, I am going to combine my work with other sites so that the beginning of the story is the first thing that is read, and not the last thing that is read, which is the way in which this present blog works.

In addition to putting research material online in an informal manner, the changes I have noted will also require more work.

If you are inclined to submit hate speech, or sarcasm, please save yourself the trouble because those comments will never be read. They will be filtered out and deleted. On the other hand if you are following this blog and the unraveling storyline, please get in touch. (See the link above right.)

It is unfortunate that the world of media has linked its output to the action world of Marvel comics where everything can be explained quickly and within a few frames.

But real life is not like that.

Paul Rusling on the other hand, lives in the comic book world where it is possible to hammer round pegs into square holes. It is that same kind of simplistic world where a "mild mannered" newspaper reporter can step into a phone booth (kids now ask: "What is that?") where he puts on male underwear over a skin-tight body suit, and then drapes his shoulders in a cloak. The result is Superman who can solve all the complex problems of the world.

In reality it is the slow plodding that reveals the real story, and the quick glance reveals nothing but jibber-jabber mixed with gobbledygook. But when paying customers are conned they often keep quiet for fear of looking foolish. When it is revealed that the promise on the cover is not supported by the contents, a lot of conned victims keep quiet, and so the con goes on.

If you are looking for a quick explanation about the start of Radio Caroline: forget it, you won't find it here! What you will find is a detailed explanation such as the one you might find in a real court room where the evidence is presented in sequence after a foundation for its admission has already been laid down by the preceding evidence.

I have now explained what happened on page 276 of 'Radio Man' and why that lone paragraph was created. I have also revealed who created it, and now it is time to examine the reasons why it was created in a more specific manner than just pointing out the differences between the words entity and identity. This is where it became very tedious and boring for anyone looking for a quick answer.

The answer really was in the details, and those details began by looking for an existing company that could be described as a ".... company manufacturing radio equipment ....".

But this is not necessarily a company manufacturing radio broadcasting equipment.

Another clue:

​This existing company manufacturing radio equipment is not necessarily emblazoned with the 'Pye' logo front and center. It may appear somewhere, but it is not something that consumers, or broadcasting listeners would be on the lookout for. It could be a specialist company that stands on its own merits and has a self-sustaining name that means something to its customers. 

This Obituary notice refers to the death of Alfred Nicholas Thomas, and it came to the attention of 'The Trio' courtesy of George Saunders. He was at one time the Chief Transmitter Engineer on board the mv Mi Amigo, and that was beginning with the years when that ship was still the home of 'Radio Atlanta'.

George Saunders has had a long and interesting career that stretches back in time. It began with Marconi; continued with Radio Atlanta and Radio Caroline South, and for a short period of time on Radio Caroline North to sort out its transmission problems; then with H.M. Government for work directed towards Ian Smith's self-declared State of Rhodesia, and finally his career concluded after years of employment with BBC-Television in Wales.

George Saunders also has a passion for studying the clandestine world of British broadcasting history that runs parallel to, but "under-the-radar" of official BBC history. That hidden history disproves the popular belief that the BBC has held a monopoly on all official broadcasting activity by transmitters located both within, and external to, the United Kingdom.

George Saunders was aware that A. N. Thomas had been associated with an offshore project called GBOK. However, some aspects of George's GBOK information are clearly apocryphal and originated from hearsay within the Marconi-BBC broadcasting community. But surprisingly, the one line that George Saunders had overlooked was this one:
"After retirement, he continue to work in broadcasting for some years for Pye ..."

That revelation is followed by this line:
"... and whisper it quietly, to undertake design work on a certain pirate radio ship!"

We do know that Alfred Nicholas Thomas was also in at the planning stage of Radio Caroline, before a mast, let alone the antenna, was even attached to it. The same goes for the creation of Radio Atlanta, and both of those early discussions took place in the office/studio of Allan Crawford located at 47 Dean Street where the early Radio Caroline programs were taped.

A number of people were present at that documented event in which Thomas discussed the mast to be attached to the mv Fredericia, and one of them was Ronan O'Rahilly. That is because Radio Caroline and Radio Atlanta were planned simultaneously, although Radio Caroline was of special interest to Pye, and that interest stretched back to GBOK, but so. did the technical interests of Alfred Nicholas Thomas.

Because the text on page 276 is without attribution, it is essential to know just how 'The Trio' and their associate who did the leg work at Wroughton, came to know that Alan Bednall is the person who became the source of the information used on page 276, even though it was 'doctored' in a contradictory manner when it was published in the book called 'Radio Man'.

Please be sure to thoroughly read yesterday's blog which has been substantially revised with additions, corrections and deletions. You need this information to understand what will follow tomorrow!

The evidence for naming Alan Bednall as the source, is found within the context of the full interview itself. That material was then cut up and pasted in such a manner in the printed book, that only by comparison with the source interview notes, does the text in the book suddenly link to the person of Alan Bednall. To make sense of this, you need to have a copy of the book 'Radio Man', because the free 'Google' excerpts on line, do not necessarily included the pages required for comparison.