Johnnie Walker [below right] was interviewed by Scott Simon, host of the Saturday morning magazine news program heard on the U.S. National Public Radio network on May 9, 2020, about the death of Ronan O'Rahilly. Here is the transcript of the interview with a commentary by me:

​The founder of pirate radio, Radio Caroline, has died.

Ronan O’Rahilly passed away April 20 at the age of 79. He was part entrepreneur, part buccaneer who broadcasted rock 'n' roll from a dilapidated Dutch ferry in the North Sea to 20 million listeners in the days before the BBC would ever sully their signal with with such music."

​Before he has even asked Johnnie Walker his first question, Scott Simon has linked the death of Ronan O'Rahilly to an absurd movie ...

"The 2009 film "Pirate Radio" portrayed those days in the early 1960s with Ronan O'Rahilly played by Bill Nighy.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PIRATE RADIO")

BILL NIGHY: (As Ronan O'Rahilly) Here's the simple situation. The authorities already dislike us. If you do this, they will hate us. And by hook or by crook, they'll find a way to close us down.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) No, they can't close us down. We're pirates. That's why we're sitting out here in the middle of the freaking ocean.

NIGHY: (As Ronan O'Rahilly) Believe me, they will find a way. Governments loathe people being free.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Johnnie Walker is a broadcaster in the U.K. He was one of the early Radio Caroline deejays and joins us now."

This of course is not true. Johnnie Walker was first hired by Don Pierson's 'Radio England' which did not start testing until May of 1966.

"SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Mr. Walker, thanks so much for being with us.

JOHNNIE WALKER: Scott, very good to be with you.

SIMON: And remind us - in the early '60s, why did you folks have to go out into an old Dutch freighter in the North Sea to play - just to play rock 'n' roll to a British audience who loves it?

WALKER: There was three radio stations for the entire United Kingdom. When pop came along, (he forgets Luxembourg) when The Beatles happened, the BBC thought it was going to be a five-minute wonder. It's just a craze. It'll come, and it'll be gone. And so you couldn't hear The Beatles. You couldn't hear The Stones. You couldn't hear The Kinks. You couldn't hear The Who. (That is rubbish because The Beatles were already big before Radio Caroline began to broadcast!) And Ronan O'Rahilly, who was a great rebel, whose grandfather was shot by the British Army in 1916 in the famous Easter uprising - so he had that rebellious streak in him. So he thought, to hell with this. I'll start my own radio station. He bought a ship. (This is more rubbish. Ronan O'Rahilly did not buy a ship and he did not start Radio Caroline.) He had a very big advantage in that his father owned a port in Ireland. (His father owned a company that made building materials and that company bought some land at water's edge. He did not own a port in Ireland.) So that port was used for fitting out an old Dutch ferry called the MV Frederica (ph). (Wrong spelling. It is Fredericia, same as the place name.) And that was the original home of Radio Caroline, which started in 1964. And as long as the ship was anchored more than three miles from the coast, it was in international waters, and there's nothing the British government could do about it. When Radio Caroline first arrived in Easter '64, the customs decided that they wouldn't supply the ship with any food or water, which would make it impossible for it to continue. (That is totally made-up and untrue. They simply refused to connect personal phone calls.) Ronan discovered an ancient English maritime law that any ships at sea should be offered support and should be supplied. So he managed to get through to the home secretary, a fellow called Reginald Maudling, informed him of this ancient law. Reginald Maudling checked it out and said, you're quite right, Mr. O'Rahilly. I'll recommence supplies to your radio station. (This is fiction made-up by Johnnie Walker. It has absolutely no foundation in fact.)

SIMON: Oh, my gosh.

WALKER: Ronan thanked him by going out with his daughter... (More rubbish.)

(LAUGHTER)

WALKER: ...Which, for a conservative MP and home secretary, must have been somewhat embarrassing to have this Irish rebel taking your daughter out on the town. (Total nonsense.)

SIMON: I gather Ronan O'Rahilly bought the ship and outfitted the ship to play rock 'n' roll, but he wasn't much of a seaman, was he? (It was not O'Rahilly's ship and at first Radio Caroline was playing a mixture of music and sounding just like the BBC, which was the idea!)

WALKER: No, he very rarely went down to the ship. So in the film, Bill Nighy sort of portrays Ronan. And he's always on the ship, hanging out with the deejays and everything like that. In reality, Ronan really had to be forced to go out to the ship. He hated it. So he'd rather stay in London where Swingin' Sixties was in full swing, hang out around the King's Road, eat in fine restaurants and basically live the life of Riley, as they called it. Not O'Rahilly, the life of Riley. It's an old Irish expression when you're kind of living it up. (Ronan O'Rahilly was hired as what one MP called him - a decoy duck - to divert attention away from the real owners.)

SIMON: Sounds like a singular character. (He was a con artist.)

WALKER: Yeah, he was - he was a one off.

SIMON: Well...

WALKER: And he worshipped the Kennedys. (Total and absolute rubbish. When JFK visited Ireland Ronan O'Rahilly was in Houston.)

SIMON: I've read that. And I guess that is one of the many theories as to why it was Radio Caroline.

WALKER: Yeah, there was. It was a wonderful photograph of John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline disrupting the works of the Oval Office in the footwell (ph) of his desk laughing and smiling. And he thought, what a wonderful image - happiness and laughter disrupting the works of government. He said, that's the name for my radio station. (Walker knows that this is 100% fiction and that Ronan O'Rahilly used it to involve Robert F. Kennedy in the Irish 'Troubles' at a time when peace was breaking out. Bobby Kennedy was furious and it almost sparked an international incident!)

SIMON: There's still Radio Caroline today, isn't there?

WALKER: There is. Radio Caroline always would come back, and there still is Radio Caroline today on the Internet. There still is a ship, the Ross Revenge, which is anchored in Tilbury, which is a - docks not far from London. And they sometimes broadcast from the ship. So it still goes on. There still is Radio Caroline. It's quite incredible. (There is something calling itself 'Radio Caroline' and its owner Malcolm Smith disowns any connection to Ronan O'Rahilly!)

SIMON: Johnnie Walker, still in broadcasting on BBC's Radio 2. Thanks so much for being with us. And thanks to Radio Caroline for everything it's done for this meeting. (So did Malcolm Smith set this up?)

WALKER: Good to talk to you, Scott. Many thanks for having me on.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAROLINE")

THE FORTUNES: (Singing) With her forever, we'll dream together. Just me and Caroline, Caroline."

This was not the first time that Scott Simon has put out rubbish that 'The Trio' challenged. Back on August 11, 2001 Scott Simon on this same NPR program put out a similar fictitious report about Roy Bates and Rough Tower known as 'Sealand'. A week later Scott Simon issued a correction to his story!

In line with totally debunking the entire Caroline mythology, research has been continuing and new  documented evidence is now coming to light that 'The Trio' have not seen before. This new material will help to further expose the fraud that Atlanta and Caroline were two projects. However, because this is Saturday and because of the pandemic, that material will take a few days to become available. Therefore I am taking a break until some of this new documentation comes to hand and 'The Trio' have had a chance to analyze it. But don't worry, I am not going away, and neither are 'The Trio'. In the meantime don't forget to add your comments to our Forum.

When Ireland and Radio Caroline are mentioned in the same breath, the anoraks assume that the focus is upon Greenore, near Dundalk, where the radio ship 'Caroline' was fitted out. Greenore being a property once owned by a building materials manufacturing company that was controlled by the father of Ronan from his home which was located nearer to Dublin, .

But eyes should drift southwest on the map of Ireland to a place located between Cork to its south, and Waterford to its north. It is a very small town called Cappoquin and that is where Charles Orr Stanley was born in 1899 during the days when the British Crown still maintained control over the entire island. Charles parents were Protestants and his childhood friends who were Roman Catholics who taunted him with yells of "Proddy-woddy green guts".

Now for the important part that this man and his son John played in the creation of ITA, and the process that created Radio Caroline. You might think that his story is well documented, but it is not. What has been written about him in biographical format is the result of his grandson, Nicholas who organized the publication of a 2002 book called 'Radio Man'. It was authored by journalist Mark Frankland with the technical assistance from Garry Busey.

When the Stanley family lost control of the Pye Group of companies in 1966, the Phillips company took over, and they all but erased the commercial and corporate history of the Pye Group. So Nicholas, the grandson of Charles and son of John, set about finding and collecting what information still existed, and then assembling it into a new collection. Where there were gaps, he began to fill them in by creating fresh interviews that he conducted personally. This is where the story of Radio Caroline enters the picture.

However, there is a mystifying problem.

Nicholas personally tracked down and found the man who was entrusted to bring the Radio Caroline project to life on behalf of his father John. That was a top secret project. The name of that man is Alan Bednall, and Nicholas interviewed him at his home in the village of Barton, which is just outside of Cambridge.

Alan Bednall gave Nicholas several artifacts and an interview. But when it came time to hand his notes to Mark Frankland, Nicholas seems to have given him a 'doctored' version which said the opposite of what Alan Bednall told Nicholas Stanley. Alan Bednall never saw his artifacts again, and neither did he get a chance to proof read the final version of his interview, before it went to press.

The published version of the interview makes no sense whatsoever, and the part about Radio Caroline occupies just one paragraph in the entire 'Radio Man' book, with its source left unattributed. Fortunately the typed copy of the original  interview notes were discovered at a warehouse facility at Wroughton, which is in the English Borough of Swindon. A few blogs ago (on 3/31/2010), I explained the story behind this search and then the discovery of the original interview notes. Because I have previously covered this information in depth, I won't repeat it here, but you can read it at: Looking for 'key words' in boxes of words ...
​
Charles Orr Stanley and his son John Stanley are only one part of the story that leads up to the creation of Radio Caroline. There are a lot of intertwined names of people who are now mostly unknown to the general public. Yet during the Nineteen Fifties, this assemblage of individuals played a big part in the creation of ITA, and then they mounted a major plan to get licences for nearly 200 stations waiting for commercial radio licences.

'Pressure Group' by H. H. Wilson and published in 1961, raised a storm in Parliament when it was discussed at length. It is an essential book for anyone who wants to understand how and why the Pilkington Committe came into existence. It wasn't just that there were nearly 200 commercial radio stations waiting to get licences, it was because one half of the Establishment wanted to roll back the powers of ITA and curtail the independence of its ITV commercial program contractor licences.

The issue was 'American influence' due to their importation of programs and format scripts.

Another book that helps to show the inter-connectivity of these pressure groups in 1961  'Power Behind the Screen' by Clive Jenkins. Now this book is also of direct interest to anyone who has read any of the nonsense books about the start of Radio Caroline: because it offers clues about the person named Arthur Carrington.

Arthur Carrington was introduced into the story to provide cover for ex-BBC and Marconi radio engineers who had worked on the transmission side of both Radio Caroline ships: mv Fredericia, and mv Mi Amigo. What is still not clear is why and how the name of  Arthur Carrington came to be used at all.

It now appears that there was a convoluted methodology wherein Carrington was approached to lend his name for this purpose because Carrington was being employed elsewhere by members of the loose cartel that were behind the project that emerged as Radio Caroline. It should also be remembered that Radio Caroline was the spin-off from Project Atlanta, and that a very hurried plan of action was thrown together beginning around September-October 1963 when the Radio Caroline spin-off began.   

The name of Arthur Carrington crops up in several items that were published by or about the birth of Radio Caroline. At first 'The Trio' wondered if there was such a person, and then they found references to him in a number of places - unconnected to radio broadcast engineering! But Arthur Carrington is credited by the bogus stories about the birth of Radio Caroline with several achievements that are in fact the documented work of employees belonging to the Pye Group of companies. Those details are to be found in the book 'Radio Man'. But Arthur Carrington was a Marconi employee whose specialty was television cameras! I suppose that it was not too difficult to attribute the first underwater cameras to Carrington, but that was revealed as being a totally fictitious and bogus claim within detailed text (with a picture!) in the book 'Radio Man'.

Actually, quite a bit has been written about Arthur Carrington, and while I won't account for all of that here (it will be in the book 'Radio-Noir'), I will refer to a 1955 article in 'The Guardian' for Thursday, November 17, 1955. On page 11 an article is headlined: "More details of ITV Plans in North and Midlands." A sub-headline reads: "Some Programmes Shared with London."

This article explains how:

"A.B.C. Television, Limited the company which has been given the contract for supplying week-end programmes in the Midlands and the North by the I.T.A., expects to be  on the air at Birmingham in February and in Manchester by the first week in May. .... No decision had been made yet in the case of Manchester, but it was likely that there too, a cinema would be converted into a studio building."

The same article continued:

"....Mr Arthur Carrington, formally of Marconi, is to be the head of engineering."

Several other Carrington articles have come to light about his specialty in studio camera positioning and his related employment by Marconi. In other words, Carrington was not an employee of the Pye Group of companies, and we also know that he was not the counterpart of Alfred Nicholas Thomas, yet this is the misleading information that being published during 1965 in the name of Radio Caroline:

This fake information was published in 1965 by 'Spectre Promotions Limited', and we have come to know a great deal about that company from official government documents which are on file at the National Archives in Kew.

Spectre is where the person of Ian Cowper Ross became seriously involved with feeding Ronan O'Rahilly with misleading (fake) stories. It also appears that for a very brief time Ian Cowper Ross was put on the Jocelyn Stevens' payroll in his advertising department. It seems that this is how he became assigned the job of speechwriter for Ronan O'Rahilly who served as the 'decoy duck' for Jocelyn Stevens.

This same misleading (fake) information was then given to John Venmore-Rowland to use in his 1967 public relations book about Radio Caroline.

When Alfred Nicholas Thomas retired in 1959 from the BBC, he went to work for the Pye Group of companies, and one of their projects was the equipping of the former lightship 'Lady Dixon' as a radio ship. That was for a station to be known by the call letters GBOK. The lightship was docked at Sheerness alongside a Pye company facility. But GBOK turned out to be a total fraud because its owner named Arnold Swanson, was a con man. Swanson's wife soon divorced and she exposed him as being a former vacuum cleaner salesman. Arnold Swanson later went to prison in Canada after being convicted in court of underage sexual activities.

Pick up any of the many books written about 'pirate radio' and you will discover that they all seem to follow the same formula: most of them claim to review what happened prior to WWII and then most of them skip over the Nineteen Fifties and begin anew with the Nineteen Sixties. So what happened between the end of WWII in 1945, and 1960?

Most of these books do not tell you.

Another aspect of these books is that they insist upon repeating the myth that the Sixties were "swinging", and that until Radio Caroline came along there was no outlet for pop music. The problem with that scenario, apart, from being 100% false, is that the Beatles owed nothing for their success to Radio Caroline.

The Beatles were already a success before Radio Caroline uttered its first emission with a test signal on March 27, 1964!

But how can that be?

The story (and it is a unified sort of accepted and well-parroted story), is that Radio Caroline changed everything, but in reality, it changed nothing!

Neither did Radio London, or any of the offshore stations.

The offshore did provide a form of employment for a time to a number of individuals, who later continued to earn a pay check (cheque) from future employment with British Establishment authorized and licensed broadcasting stations. Some went overseas and got employment with licensed stations there. George Saunders once remarked that those offshore personnel who did reasonably well were the highly qualified and skilled engineers, but the djs were not as successful because anyone with the gift of the gab could be a disc jockey. Engineers had years of schooling and specialized training, and they were in demand by many companies and governments. Consequently many of the djs became jealous of them (and showed it) at offshore radio reunions!

While the financiers of the offshore stations remained a mystery, there was no bigger mystery than how Radio Caroline got on the air. Yet many of the djs on the offshore stations started to tell embellished stories about the origins of these stations and their impact upon the Nineteen Sixties. Because the financiers remained quiet, no one contradicted the djs, and it was the djs who mainly supplied fodder for the newspapers and the many books that began to appear.

After the Sixties came a choppy period in which offshore broadcasting had no real significance to the real world, and the Seventies were followed by the Eighties, in which for a brief moment; mainly in the southeast of England, interest was generated both for and against in the sounds generated by offshore broadcasting. Finally the Nineties saw the lid go on British offshore broadcasting, and this was followed by a handful of enthusiasts who evolved into a ship preservation group. Much later they succeeded in getting a license from the British government for a low-power community radio license for a station they called 'Radio Caroline'.

If you have heard of Christine Keeler, it is possible that you have heard of John Profumo who became Minister of War in the government of Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. But back in 1952, John Profumo was also waving the flag for the introduction of sponsored commercial radio.

Profumo was not alone among Tory MPs. Geoffrey Hirst who represented Shipley, in Yorkshire, was also a member of this group. In 1953 he was in Scarborough addressing the issue of commercial television. But by 1959, Hirst had registered a major company called Radio Yorkshire (Development) Company Ltd. That company created a spin-off several years later, and its aims and ambitions were to ignore licensing and go offshore. That 'pirate' approach was squelched by the Hirst group, and Don Robinson's venture had to change its name to Radio 270.

While the pre-WWII stations in Captain Plugge's IBC network had built quite a following until the beginning of the WWII, the opportunity to repeat that plan of action after the War was closed off. The problem arose when most of their host nations came to owe their liberation in large part to the sanctuary of safety that the British Crown offered their governments in exile during the War.

Of the countries that really mattered, only Luxembourg evolved into creating a renewed problem for the British Crown, and its agency, the GPO, which had licensed the BBC. While Captain Plugge's broadcasting network may have been put out of operation, his IBC studios were not, and they became an asset employed by Allan Crawford to make his cover versions of hit records.

On the other hand, after the closure of the English language commercial stations on the European continent, the J. Walter Thompson studios at Bush House became redundant. They were sold off to that murky entity that became known as the BBC World Service. It was a 'front' for another entity hiding in obscurity behind the mantle of the British Foreign Office, which itself was heavily tied into the sinister worlds of MI5 and M16. Collectively they were known as the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS). It was the SIS which had a big part in helping to create the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) for the USA, which in a later incarnation became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Churchill's wartime directives also led to the emergence of the British commandos and the template for their success eventually led to a U.S. version called the Green Berets.

There were a lot of people from both sides of the Atlantic who had been milling around in London during WWII, and inevitably geopolitical ideas were also in circulation and in combat with commercial interests. Charles Orr Stanley was a Protestant from the Republic of Ireland who straddled the broken fence on the island of Ireland which separated Irish Republicans from British monarchists. He built large industries on both sides of the Irish border and maintained a headquarters in Cambridge, England.

His various companies formed a core enterprise known as the Pye Group of Companies, and Pye became recipients of civilian and military contracts paid for by British taxpayers. Tomorrow I will explain how Charles Orr Stanley began to bring together all of the interested parties and launched a campaign that lasted through the Fifties and into the Sixties which eventually resulted in the creation of Radio Caroline.

 This is a British newspaper headline from 1944.

World War II is not over, but two plans are underway to introduce British sponsored commercial radio broadcasting, and both have American backing.

One of those plans was for "over 900 radio stations" (that is what this well-known newspaper reported in print!). Another plan was for radio broadcasting stations on ships. The bait being offered to get licences for land based stations was to provide what the British Broadcasting Corporation could not afford, and that was access to Hollywood's greatest radio stars by the listeners of British radio sets, which were capable of receiving more than BBC programming. In the early days of radio, some of the bigger U.S. radio network stations broadcast from the USA on shortwave, and they gained an audience in the British Isles. Standard radio sets often included long wave; medium wave and at least two short wave bands on their dial.

Everyone was aware that the British Crown would not permit the liberated lands in Europe to once more permit transmitters to be hired out to British commercial radio entrepreneurs in the way they had before the War. If licences were not forthcoming, then ships would be used to broadcast from offshore. Programming would be relayed from the United States, either via shortwave re-transmission, or by transcription discs.

The precursor to this audacious plan that appeared in the newspaper shown on this page, was the advent of the American Armed Forces Radio stations which for a time. peppered the British Isles before D-Day.

But now, with the final months of the War playing out, a number of groups were beginning to formulate a new plan of action. It would be comprised of both British and American interests, and they would keep trying to introduce commercial radio until October 15, 1964. The timeline from 1944 to 1964 covers many events, not the least being the introduction of a modified form of independent British commercial television station franchises, with American connections.

Tomorrow we will begin by examining those twenty years and the events that surrounded them. Nothing happened in isolation. Everything is interrelated, and tomorrow we will be examining the context of those events.

[5/7/2020 - I have expanded and modified this item since original publication.]

Personal attacks against me have risen since I began to expose the real person who was Ronan O'Rahilly, but there has not been a single rebuttal of the evidence presented. I am not surprised since it would be difficult to justify the fake story now that the real story has begun to be exposed.

Tomorrow I hope to present you with an outline of real events that led up to the start of Radio Caroline on March 27, 1964.

A previous image from the blog of 4/28/2020 titled Blood on his hands?, which was deemed to be too difficult to read, has now been updated: because it is one of the keys to understanding what happened when Labour won the October 15, 1964 UK General Election. Ronan O'Rahilly had been hired as a 'decoy duck'; a door man diverting attention away from people who were really behind Radio Caroline. But Ronan O'Rahilly - the irresponsible gadfly that he was; the man who almost got Simon Dee arrested for theft, and the man who did get George Drummond arrested for theft; plunged headlong into the bloodbath that was to become 'The Troubles' when he humiliated both Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and nearly caused a major international incident by embarrassing U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy; brother of the recently murdered President!

Yes, this is the REAL about Ronan O'Rahilly and not the fake image that his troll-like fans have been worshipping!

Now do you understand that sarcastic political speech that Johnnie Walker read at midnight on August 14, 1967, and which was written by Ronan O'Rahilly?

In case you need to be reminded, listen to it again by clicking HERE to hear Johnnie Walker read Ronan O'Rahilly's script at 12 midnight on August 14, 1967. To listen to the entire this broadcast in context of the last transmissions before August 14, 1967, and the continuing transmissions into August 15, 1967, please click HERE!

Robin Leach merely invented the Caroline Kennedy myth to get a story for the 'National Enquirer' - but he was 'scooped' by a U.S. daily which then syndicated their expose to newspapers across the USA. But Ronan O'Rahilly used that myth for sinister purposes! I wonder how many tears would have been shed for Ronan O'Rahilly in Northern Ireland, had it been understood what kind of a self-centered and uncaring human being Ronan O'Rahilly really was? It had nothing to do with the issue of "Ireland for the Irish" - the British should never have occupied the island. But as the news report above shows, by 1962 there may have been a quiet, peaceful and political solution on the horizon. Ronan O'Rahilly merely helped to drench the years to come in bloodshed, and he did this while humiliating Prime Minster Harold Wilson in public. In so doing he created such a life-long enemy of Radio Caroline that even Tony Benn did not understand it.

'Radio-Noir' now begins here.

This is where my book begins its presentation as this blog transitions from a book review to presenting a new story-line in episodic format. A new web page will also be added very shortly where new material first presented here, will then be edited to become part of an e-book which in turn will become a printed book.

Meanwhile, a academic project is to be launched under the name of 'YesterAir'. It was first announced back in 2015, and its style, presentation, authorship will remain totally separate in scope and in its target audience from 'Radio-Noir'.

Some may wonder why the title "Dial 999 for Caroline!" seems to have been dropped by 'The Trio' - well, it hasn't!

Click and you will see Part One of the video that was made using that title. However, that title projects the expectation of a British criminal story, which it is. But it is much more than that, it is also a story involving the intelligence agencies of both the UK and USA as well as the activities of the U.S. Cosa Nostra and the so-called 'Jewish Mafia'. In the USA "999" is unknown as the number to call for emergency services, because "911" is used instead. In other words this story has not shied away from its dark overtones, it has done just the opposite: it has expanded in scope, hence 'Radio-Noir'.

No one has ever put this story together before! What has been published (and broadcast) so far about Radio Caroline, has mainly been fluff and puff; absolute nonsense pulled from thin air.

In other words the public have been presented with rubbish; nonsense, and idiocy to benefit a handful of people trying to make money off the legacy of two names: Radio Caroline and Ronan O'Rahilly. However, Radio Caroline and "the dark side of life​" is a more apt coupling, although Ronan O'Rahilly personally represented that "dark side of life" that no one wanted to talk about - because of fear!

The amount of money being discussed here, is not the small amount money that is handed under the table in wads of folded notes to a receiver who poses a physical threat to the giver. This is about the digits flowing through electronic conduits that carry untaxed money to obscure bank accounts that are controlled by people with their own methods of enforcement to prevent defaults. That is what the "dark side" means.

Let there be no doubt about what this blog is unraveling: it is one aspect of the dark side of life that has been accompanied by sex, drugs, booze and music. Lots and lots of music to drown out the mayhem and the misery.

Welcome to part of that world fronted by a minor greeter and doorman named Ronan O'Rahilly.

As I explained the other day, this investigation began back in 1966, or more specifically, it began on June 22, 1966 when a story was splashed across the pages of Daily Telegraph about the murder of Reg Calvert. He will killed by way of a gun barrel that was pointed at him by Oliver Smedley who then pulled a trigger.

A member of 'The Trio' became intrigued.

How could a major British daily newspaper that represented the Tory Establishment in power, get a story so wrong about that event and then cause it be published? This question resulted in a phone call to the reporter who admitted that he had no prior background knowledge concerning the story. He had written his article because it had been assigned to him by his editor.

In order to satisfy his boss, the reporter went into to a favorite watering hole on Fleet Street where these folk once congregated at lunch time. Over a pint of beer he asked a friend who worked for a ITA television program franchise to fill him in on the details, and from their conversation the story then appeared in print.

It seemed to this member of 'The Trio' that the background story to the sudden development of commercial radio stations from off the British coastline should be told properly, and since he was a member of the National Union of Journalists and held other press credentials, that he should write it without delay. The end result was a half-page feature that was published on June 27, 1967 in a regional daily newspaper.

A year later, in fact, two days after the majority of these offshore stations had closed down, this same member of 'The Trio' wrote a letter on August 16, 1967 to Don Pierson in Texas. It asked for details behind the Texas creation of Radio London; Radio England and Britain Radio. No reply was forthcoming - at that time.

Years later, when the author of the letter was in Texas on May 22, 1983, Don Pierson personally gave this letter writer his financial and legal documents relating to those stations. They had been sitting in boxes stored in the rest room (toilet) of a Pullman rail car which sat upon rails and served as a guest house in Don Pierson's back garden.

The main contents of that box answered the request for information, but they also led to a story that had been kept from the British public. So when Steve England of 'Tapetrix' began selling the story of 'Swinging Radio England', he was actually peddling fantasy and not fact. When this was brought to the attention of Steve England he admitted - on a second version of his tape-for-sale, why the true story was only now emerging for the first time.

No one in Britain knew much about Don Pierson, and prior to some of the Pierson documents being shared with others, no one knew the name of Burton Kanter of Chicago. But even when some of these documents were then shown to a colleague of Ray Anderson who then reprinted them without permission, none of his readers bothered to ask questions about Burton Kanter.

No one asked who was behind 'The World Tomorrow' broadcasts, or how they got on to the airwaves of the offshore stations.

In fact, hardly anyone asked questions but a lot of people kept churning out books and broadcasts to the gullible masses who had been former listeners to the offshore stations. They were interested in reminiscent tales that were often made up or embellished by former disc jockeys and minor bit players who knew nothing but wanted appear to be important (in their own eyes).

The money side, the real side, remained a secret and until now, and there has been no bigger secret than the dark side of the story, the sinister story of Radio Caroline.

Even with the death of Ronan O'Rahilly, his local priest at his memorial service was handed a script full of nonsense that pretended to chart the life work of this gadfly Irishman. The press duly reported that nonsense as fact.

Of course the brainwashed adoring fans of Ronan O'Rahilly are aghast that anyone should dare to suggest that this man was merely a 'decoy duck', which is how a contemporaneous Member of Parliament had once described him to the press. But as time went on, this decoy duck became ever more the charlatan and con man who behaved like an evangelist who was spreading  baloney to sustain his own personal lifestyle.

So I don't expect, and 'The Trio' don't expect, that the cult-like trolls will accept these revelations about the true and sinister story behind Radio Caroline. The plodding academic version has been published in episodic articles for many years, but few have read them. Such is the fate of academia. It runs parallel to the legal world where new evidence can only be presented after a tedious foundational chain has been presented, and it has to be to the satisfaction of the judge who is presiding over the court room trial of that evidence. Wikipedia has taken the strange step of excluding original research, which means that nonsense published as fact is accepted by Wikipedia and remains unchallenged. Some of the material on Wikipedia about Radio Caroline is unbelievably ridiculous and without foundation in fact.

The academic side of this project by 'The Trio' is still in progress, and it will appear as a series of works called 'YesterAir'; but this account called 'Radio-Noir' is for everyone who wants a quicker fix in "bam-bam-bam" style that is more likely to trigger an emotional response of shock and horror. Of course trolls will simply ignore it all because their minds have never been open, and I do not expect to open them now - in whatever manner the facts are laid before them.

If you are ready, I will now begin an account of how and why Radio Caroline began with a test broadcast on March 27, 1964 from off the coast of Essex, England.

This is 'Radio-Noir' - examining the dark side under a media-microscope!