Revisiting the early 1980s

Looking for some airtime. It must have been around the early part of 1980, because The Buggles had dropped out of the charts after killing the radio stars. Not being a Radio Starmy self, I avoided the carnage. I was a much unseasoned radio deejay looking for some airtime. The MV Mi Amigo from Radio Caroline had foundered in the North Sea and VOP was the only radio ship afloat. I recall the deejays at the time on the station like Keith York, Nigel (Bagwan), Tony Mandel, who'd been on Knock John in the Sixties-Radio Essex/BBMS; and Eyal, an Israeli jock who spoke English and Arabic in addition to Hebrew.

On the engineering side there was Mr Lewis (sure knew his stuff!), a succession of captains and Bill Bennett (no relation), more later. Growing up with Radio Caroline North intravenously dripped into my bloodstream, I was reared on a healthy diet of Daffy Don, Jerry Leighton and "Murph The Surf," who not only sounded great but made sounding professional, so easy. I could sound like Super Leighton, couldn't I? Fall into the studio, do a show, fall out of the studio and then read, watch TV and sunbathe? Do you know that strange sensation one gets when one unintentionally bangs an elbow on something? The numbness in the arm and the need to pause until the some feeling returns to the arm?

Three feet from Haifa. When going through the process of applying to VOP much mention was made of the anchorage, 3 miles off Tel Aviv. Upon arrival, I found the anchorage was slightly different, being 3 feet from Haifa. The MV Peace/Cito was in dock undergoing a "three week refit," which had lasted for about three months. The refit was in order to get the ship insured with Lloyds, London, which was being very particular about the work they wanted carried out before issuing insurance. The jocks had been scraping, painting, fitting and repairing for months and understandably, morale was not too good. I had escaped the major, filthy jobs such as chipping, however there was still back-breaking toil left to do over the next 4-6 weeks.

A large piece of kit came aboard that looked like the worst sort of DIY self-assembly kit from MFI. It transpired that this kit was the basic materials with which to build a corrugated iron shed of some sort, and we were told it was to eventually be the "DJ's TV Lounge" We fell for it ... Of course, we were keen to do something that should make our lives more pleasant, and once erected, Nigel (Bagwan) and I started to paint the interior of this thing. After painting for a while, I started to become dizzy from the lead-laden paint fumes. "Nige, I'm gonna open the door, it's intense in here." "No, leave it a few minutes, " he replied. The temperature outside was in the 80's. I carried on for a bit, but had to ask again a little later about opening the door. Nigel held out for a reason I couldn't establish at that point and finally, I had to say, "Sod this, Nige, I need some air." I turned around, and saw Lucy in the sky with diamonds, the girl with kaleidoscope eyes, getting into a newspaper taxi under a marmalade sky whilst cellophane flowers of yellow and green towered over our heads. I awoke on the port deck. The cook was forcing water down my throat and I was being vigorously fanned with an LP cover. Bill Bennett appeared, looked at me and said, "Dickhead" before continuing to haul ass and I then saw Nigel, in the grip of a cosmic mind expanding experience, who asked: "Was it a far-out trip?"

Both thriling and frightening. The journey to anchor turned out to be both a thrilling and frightening experience for me in particular. I had wandered up to the bridge where the captain was busy steering the ship. The problems began when I asked a series of questions about maritime matters: What's the top speed in knots, how many miles per hour do knots equal, what navigation lights need to be shown? Etc. "Ah," said the captain "you like schepen (ships)?" I said something to the effect that knowledge is seldom wasted and then I suddenly found myself at the wheel of the ship, steering it into the inky blackness. "Keep it on ze Sou' South West, always," and with that the captain started to hurry off the bridge. "Wait, I mean, Captain, what about other vessels and stuff?" I was worried about the possibility of running into one of the scores of tiny fishing smacks that dot the sea and, more alarmingly, the super tankers that dominate that part of the Mediterranean. Our ship was lit up like Blackpool illuminations during a power-surge and so human eyesight would not be able to see the lights of other ships, well not until it was too late. The captain shrugged his shoulders and scurried away for a large brandy and a cigar in his cabin.

Directive 2. Directive 2 was issued many times, over many weeks. One morning I was in the record library doing some cataloguing and the on-air jock came in to get a Perry Como track. It was then that I decided to change the MOR box section of the library by taking off the label, "MOR," and substituting a new classification, called, "Guys like 'dat." I was on-air one day when the chap on Radio Watch came into the studio and I automatically said, "Tell the boys to play some Perry Como," and reached for the MOR pile. "No!" came the unexpected reply, "play some Joan Baez!" "Joan Baez? Joan Baez?" I stuck on some track or other-might have been, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The next month or so saw a very Baez-heavy output from VOP. I presumed it was some sort of plugging rather like Caroline and Major Minor in the Sixties. I think Joan had a new album out at the time.

I said to Keith something like, "How much are we (VOP) getting for plugging the stuff?" Keith burst into a paroxysm of laughter and looked at me rather strangely. I was then told that the Joan Baez tracks were being hammered not as a plug but because Joan had recently visited Israel, met with Abie, and that he really fancied her. "Ah," I said, "a genuine case of "Loving Awareness ..."" Keith looked at me impassively. A chance for some in-house radio humour there , but I could see he wasn't going to roll with it! Eventually things settled down and I was learning a lot from the other jocks and I think it's fair to say that VOP was sounding very, very slick-apart from my show that is.

Drink Water. The Voice of Peace, from "somewhere in the Mediterranean" was pulling in some quite decent advertising and I was curious about a new ad that was on the commercial log. It was voiced by Abie (very unusual) and the ad said, in Hebrew: "Stu Myem, Myem, Stu Myem." I asked Tony for the English translation and was told it was, "Drink water, water, drink water." The commercial was played a lot, I think a few times an hour at that stage, and, having worked out that it wasn't a paid for advert, I remarked to Tony that Abie must be very health conscious by encouraging the listener to have the health benefits of lots of water. You know when you've dropped a clanger don't you!! Tony was in fits of laughter and said, "I've got to tell this to everyone," and hurried off to inform the guys that I'd done it again. It was only later that I was told that the reason for "Stu Myem," was that a departed DJ had once insulted Coca Cola on air and that Coke withdrew their advertising. Abie was running these ads exhorting everybody to Drink Water, in retaliation against Coca Cola.