Life is a rock

But the radio rolled me.  Gotta turn it on louder so my DJ told me. Ahh wise words - finally I saw "The Boat That Rocked" a fairly average film but it did remind me of my dear colleague Keith who many years ago presented mid-mornings on Essex Radio.  He told me some great home truths about those rosy days of pirate radio.  His alter ego during the early seventies was 'Dave Rogers' he worked aboard a radio ship anchored in international waters in the north sea.  The original name for the station was Radio North Sea International (How long did they take to come up with that.)

The truth it was a rusty old wreck owned by a couple of doggy characters who had some very dubious 'friends' with whom they owed a great deal of money.  As a kind of warning these 'friends' set sail for the radio ship and fire bombed the vessel - whilst the DJ's were on board and on air.  Great radio, they all thought they were going to die.  The 999 exchange in the south of England crashed with calls from anxious listeners.  Take a listen to the YouTube recording - now that's Arqiva winning material.

One more thing that Keith told me was that you could walk along the deck with an ordinary florescent tube and when you past the transmitter mast the tube lit up.  Were the pirates so great?