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Radio North Sea International
Justin Case
Posts: 341 Forum Member
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Does anyone remember Radio North Sea International in the early 70s. Last night I managed to download the nightly close down music, its called Man Of Action by the Les Reed Orchestra, a great track that brings back memories of this station.
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Don't remember the station as such, but I have that theme tune on a CD called Pirate radio Themes *i think*
http://www.tonyallan.org/audio.htm
It played pop music, with US ads, (Kent cigarettes, PAN AM, Pepsi etc)
Of course, non of the ads were paid for, and the authorities reckoned the code transmittted on SW after close down was more important than anything else, so jammed the signals.
The owners were Mssrs Meister and Boilier, see under arms dealers!
A nice station to listen to, not to be part off!
RNI was a great station that I used to enjoy with a tranny in bed as a teenager. Robin Banks, Daffy Don Allen, Brian McKenzie and the rest made the music a pleasure to listen to.
Highly Enjoyable and worth checking out some of the offshore radio sites for some great clips of the attempted boardings etc. Tremendous swashbuckling entertainment.
got a nice bit of super 8 video footage of the Mebo II - RNI - ( and Veronica , Caroline ) from the 70's during a jaunt out to Holland with friends in the early seventies. Must get it transfere to DVD and then put it onto my site.
Henry
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
That aside, our local hospital radio - Carillon Radio on 1386 kHz uses that same theme music. Brings it all back. That well known jock from back then, Steve Merike, lives not too far away from me.
I was the first journalist aboard RNI for Record Mirror and Mr Bollier even paid my hotel bill!
Anyway, Man of Action by Les Reed Orchestra is on RPM Records RPM 260 available, as they say, from all good record stores.
Yes, I think I will keep out of this one.....regarding the previous post, though, some of the ads were indeed paid for as I saw some of the cheques!
Much has been suggested and some of the offshore books shed light on some activities that were not exactly mainstream broadcasting practice.
This topic takes one back to that old 'Danger Man' episode in the 60's "The Not So Jolly Rodger" where Partic McGoohan uncovered a spying operation on board a fort in the Thames esturay. Good story line for something that was a very topical issue in its day. Does anyone remeber seeing that?
I could not wait for my Record Mirror (when did Record Mirror take over from Disc?) to arrive each week to see your latest reports and the latest front page news about "RNI" and often colour photo's - the Station always brings back good memories.
Oh yes my Head told me off for giving out "Free Radio Campaign" leaflets!
Cheers John
There was this "friendly" rivalry between me and David Hughes who was on Disc. I had moved over from Record Retailer to Record Mirror and started their radio coverage. I had a bit of a battle to get the space in the magazine until I went to the States and met the owners (Billboard) who devoted a lot of space to radio - so we then took over as the main radio magazine.
We got the Radio Veronica supplement (which put on 12,000 sales) and I managed to get out to RNI a week ahead of Disc. My connection with RNI (which was purely as a journalist) was questioned, closely, by the BBC twice. The first time when I became a contributor to Scene and Heard on Radio 1 and then when I joined Radio 1 and 2 in 1971. I had looked into the funding of RNI a bit - but Record Mirror readers were more interested in the music and the DJ's so not much ever got printed!
Yes I interviews Patrick McGoohan for Record Mirror on that one as the ITA company did a major Press thing on it.
I have that RNI coverage by Rodney - and a very young looking Mr Collins it is in his picture which I guess was taken after he'd thrown up on the tender?
CBS Records put the clipping up in their office and it's been passed down through the ages.
As far as i am aware they only jammed the MW signal and not the SW, I can remember trying to listen through the noise,
It is still a mystery why they jammed it because as soon as the ship returned to the Dutch coast the jamming stopped.
R
I wish there had been , as I could have sold my story to the News Of The World.
There were no locked rooms. Also nothing supsicious about shortwave, after all Luxembourg used that delivery system.
We were Jammed because Harold Wilson was paranoid about the Pirates, and thought it may have some bearing on the election, which it did.
I don't disagree with what you say at all. I certainly wasn't suggesting there was evidence of anything. But it wasn't just Harold Wilson who was jumpy, was it?
Spent a lot of time listening in Glasgow to RNI - didn't one of the great DJ's always finish with Doris Day 'Move Over Darlin''. Scottish TV did indeed steal the tune Man of Action and
at the time I wrote to them to ask where I could get a copy. They wrote back and said no chance as it was a closed piece of music for broadcasters only so have been unable to get a copy. When I did a few RSL's in the'burgh tried to get it again but just used 242's tune instead(the old radio scotland theme). These posts certainly jogged a few memories......thanks
Well the track is definitely available on that RPM CD because I played it recently on two stations and in both cases listeners have been able to buy the CD
That would have been Brian McKenzie (aka Brian Webb on 242 Radio Scotland).
http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/djsw2z.htm.
Found the source for RPM260 thanks again.
Those were the days eh!!
I listened to a friend's recording of 242's hoochter cheuchter show (big Jack) and can't believe what you could get away with in 1967- couldn't broadcast it now or you would be arrested - wonder if internet streaming is now so censored as well!!
I tend to agree with that, RTD (Roger Day) has said on here and many times before that there was nothing sinister behind the MEBO 2 operation and that may be so but it still seems strange to me that of all the Offshore Stations RNI was the only one ever to be jammed by the British Government,
I think when Caroline first turned up in 64 it caused the authorities more concern than RNI did but they never jammed that,
Then in the 80s they must have spent a lot of money trying to silence Laser 558 (Eurosiege) Why did they not just jam them it would have been a lot cheaper?
RNI were incredibly popular at the time, and there was a General Election in the offing. The government wanted to make sure that no anti-govermnent propaganda was heard, and therefore they entered into a period of attempted high power jamming that caused all sorts of problems to the listener, and very much back-fired. I remember that RNI moved to 244m just next to Radio 1 on 247, and there was this cat and mouse game as RNI fed the transmitter with a VFO and moved up and down the band a bit to try and avoid the jamming. This resulted in Radio One being inaudible at times over large parts of southern England, and ensured everyone knew what was going on. It was a political disaster, particularly when RNI temporarily changed its name to Radio Caroline for the election. People still listened jamming or no jamming.
I tried to build a notch filter to cancel out the jamming signal, but without much success.