The making of the young Paul Alexander

Discovering offshore radio. I came rather late to the Caroline family: we were too poor to have our own television and family evenings were spent listening to Radio Luxembourg. I remember that the radio wouldn't be on much during the day — the Light Programme was pretty square, except for Saturday mornings, and we would borrow a record player from neighbours from time to time. At Christmas 1964, I got my own transistor radio and my interest was sparked — I helped to set up a school electronics club and realised that I was outside the reception area of a lot of stations, which I had read about "down south." A friend came back from a holiday in the Lake District with tales of a Radio Caroline and we eventually heard it very late one night, around the wavelengt "199." It sounded so different — the deejays were enthusiastic about the music, but somehow still "cool." My holy grail was to hear this Caroline station during the day and I strung out some elaborate long wires across the school fields — claiming them to be a pilot for changing the PA-system to a 100-volt line-system. Eventually one lunchtime, I found Radio Caroline North, weak but there — and what a breath of fresh air.

The phone call that changed my life. Winding my life forward a few years, at the time the MV Mi Amigo sprang back to life off the Dutch coast, I was working in nightclubs as a deejay to pay my way through college doing radio engineering. One day I had a phone call that changed my life from Kate Carey. She said that her husband Chris wondered if I would be interested in coming out to the ship for a while and doing some programmes. They were soon to relaunch the "Caroline International" service at full power and wanted some bright and breezy Top-40 deejays. To say that I was pretty excited for the rest of that day would be an understatement — I was over the moon! I couldn't eat — unusual for me! — or concentrate on my gig that night at a new venue in Bridlington. It had opened only three days previously and the owners had spent a fortune promoting it with billboards, newspapers, and so on, and my face was incorporated into this. Imagine their dismay when I told them I was leaving to join Radio Caroline. I didn't know when, the arrangements had been a bit flaky to say the least. I remember being told by either Chris or Kate that "there wouldn't be a great deal of bread in the trip." I didn't mind — I would eat toast instead!

At the office the whole of one huge wall was dominated by "Radio Caroline" picked out in cyan blue using the legendary square letters, I remember it as clearly as yesterday and only wish someone had taken a picture; it was so imposing and impressive. There were a small army of helpers "getting things together" in the office at that time — Dennis King probably being one of the hardest workers after Chris and Kate who worked like trojans day and night to get the station operational. One of the most interesting, however, was a little girl of about three years old, whose image became part of the Caroline logo — the outline of a little girl eating an ice-cream? That was Louise Cary, a little bundle of energy who was proficient than most of the English team at taking calls in Dutch and acting as translator. She certainly knew her way around — I remember going to the post office with her to swap the huge bundles of International Reply Coupons that arrived at Caroline House each day for postage stamps. Louise was able to show me where to buy ice cream on the way back!

I seem to recall doing a period of test transmissions, the usual pleading for reception reports. We decided against trying to spell out the Van Hoogendorpstraat address, as it would diminish the amounts of mail, and simply announced Radio Caroline, The Hague in Holland. To the credit of the Dutch PTT, we received all the mail without a problem at all. I understand that we took up an entire corner of the sorting office for quite some time and the amounts of mail certainly kept the army of workers at the office occupied. Mail addressed to the deejays was sent out to the ship and I have to say that it is one of the most pleasing things about working in radio — receiving mail. The mail we received at Caroline was phenomenal — I have never seen so much. I used to sit for hours opening the stuff, and of course, it provided superb programme material. My sincere thanks to everyone who has ever written to a deejay on a radio ship — you made the life so much more fun.

Eventually Dick and Jimmy on the ship realised we were in trouble, reeled the line in and repaid it out, this time floating on an empty canister towards us. We were busily trying to row our way back and making no headway at all. After about an hour of drama, which included us both ending up in the water when I managed to lose our only oar, we got back to the ship and as a penance I had to single-handedly crank up the lifeboat back into position on the davits — it took me almost ninety minutes. I was a good boy after that — until one day I popped across to the Radio Veronica ship — they always seemed to have more beer than we did and their newsman Arend Langenberg and Chief Engineer José van Groningen always made us more than welcome. Dick Palmer had to sack me after that episode. I think he sacked me a few times, or confined me to painting duties, all good disciplinarian stuff I suppose for those who had served in a public school, which life on the Mi Amigo was very much alike! My misery was usually short-lived as a few hours later there would be a tender and either Chris or Kate would unsack me as we were short of deejays.

A strong team and weak equipment. When one looks back at the line-ups, we had a very strong team — Roger Day (when the tapes showed up!), Andy Archer, Spangles Maldoon, Robin Adcroft, Peter Chicago, Steve England, Norman Barrington, Dick Palmer, Dave West and Johnny Jason. Oh, and that Yorkshire guy with a Beatle fringe masquerading as Paul Alexander! Andy had become PD of the Dutch easy-listening service and also recruited a strong team including Joop Verhoof, and two ace readers — Henk Meeuwis and Leo de Later, who we lost to Radio Veronica, and more recently a star TV-performer with RTL in Holland. The Mi Amigo still had a lot of equipment missing at the time and it was a credit to Peter Chicago and Robin Adcroft that they got two services operating at the time. The main 259-studio had the big Gates mixer and the cart machines. It was used for the main revenue earner, the Dutch daytime easy-listening station, and in the evenings by the Caroline rock music or progressive "album" station. The 389 studio next door was the large old wrap around desk, rather like a counter from a fish and chip shop, with a very basic homemade mixer that looked like it had been purloined from a nightclub. We had simply two Garrard SP25 turntables that cost about twenty pounds each and an old Grundig open reel tape recorder on the floor for commercials and the occasional jingle. The microphone was excellent however, an AKG D202 — or rather it was excellent until it failed on me at 7:30 one morning. I dare not wake Chicago, his sleep was sacrosanct, and so I set to disassembling the microphone. I got it working again, but couldn't get it back together; I think I was fired for that too!

On one trip home, I was talking to an old friend in Hull about the station and he asked if we needed an experienced seaman. I called Chris in the office and we certainly could — bring a welder too was his instruction. No need for that, as Mike Hydrophoor as he became known due to his accomplishment with that particular piece of kit in the engine room, could do both. We soon had quite a contingent of engineers on the boat, being joined by Bob Noakes and others, and things improved rather rapidly, until suddenly on evening the tender came alongside and I stood in for Steve England while he helped do something else. Kate was in the studio with Andy Archer and we were talking about some great new plan, when suddenly during a link the light flickered, the turntable slurred and I flipped — "that bloo*** **** generator again" I said, and thought: "Oh no, I swore on the air." Fortunately for me, the transmitter had tripped out seconds before my expletives. But the generator had finally died and the only way to get back on the air was for a deal for some new ones that involved giving up our coveted 389-transmitter to the new Belgian station, Radio Atlantis. That's why when Radio Atlantis debuted its jingles, it said it was on 385, although it was actually broadcasting on 259 as the 50-kiloWatt transmitter could not be made to work on the lower frequency at full power. The Caroline International service was finished however as the team dispersed to ILR, Luxembourg and all points west.