Centre Radio, Christmas 1986. L-R behind: Mark McGuinness, Frank Decker. L-R front: John Walsh, Peter Walsh, Dónal Greene, Liam Ward.
Of the many pirates in the decade 1978-1988, Centre Radio was not well known beyond its immediate area in northeast Dublin but it is an important part of the history of Pirate.ie because both co-founders of this site were involved with it. Brian Greene, known as Bobby Gibbson on air, was one of those who started Centre Radio on 19th December 1986 at the Baldoyle Youth Club in Dublin 13 and John Walsh was also involved. Reflecting the young age of the DJs, Centre Radio was only on air during school holidays in 1986 and 1987 but began daily broadcasting in spring 1988. It closed at midnight on New Year’s Eve that year.
Centre Radio broadcast on several frequencies on the FM band during its two years on air, beginning with 88 MHz during its first outing at the end of 1986. In this recording from Christmas Eve that year, Eric Delaney is on air and is followed by Brian Greene at 9pm. Adverts for local businesses are also heard. Another familiar name on radio in this part of Dublin, Derek Jones, is to take over from 11pm.
Our tape was recorded from 2020-2105 on December 24th 1986 and is from the Leon Tipler Tapes Collection, donated to us by Steve England.
Radio Caroline Dublin flyer from 1991 (from Brian’s collection).
Radio Caroline Dublin (1989-2000) was one of the longest running stations of the second wave of the pirates following legalisation. It was set up by Brian Greene (Bobby Gibbson on air) and Tom Berry (RIP) who had previously run Centre Radio from Bayside in 1987-1988. Radio Caroline Dublin began broadcasting on bank holiday Mondays in 1989 and went full-time in January 1992. The station settled on 102.5 FM and increased its signal overtime but ran into difficulties with the authorities when Lite FM (later Q102) was licensed for 102.2 in 2000. Radio Caroline Dublin changed its name to WXTC but closed soon afterwards.
Radio Caroline Dublin was typical of pirate stations of the era. The Broadcasting and Wireless Telegraphy Act 1988 forced pirate from the high street and hotels into garden sheds for the majority of the 1990s. Radio Caroline Dublin never ran adverts and did limited fundraisers. Its core funding was through vigorous adherence to DJ subscriptions. Weekly and monthly subs were collected with two tiers for waged and unwaged. The subs from 25+ volunteers funded the very best of club DJing equipment in studio and a Dublin Mountains TX site. The subs were directly linked to democratic involvement in purchasing decisions. Ownership structure was more akin to 1970s AM pirates but there was a not-for-profit ethos from the start.
Full time hours were 5pm-12am Monday-Friday and 9am-1am at weekends. The station was involved in an unsuccessful licence bid for a community radio licence in 1996, and was a constituent group in the formation of Dublin-wide community of interest station Anna Livia FM, but then never got involved with that station as they were busy building Radio Caroline Dublin.
This interview with Brian Greene was conducted by Pete Reid (Simon Maher) and Gerard Roe in July 1998 in the Radio Caroline Dublin studio. It was featured in Anorak Hour #151 on 2nd August 1998 on Phantom FM and repeated during Anorak Hour #249 on 17th September 2000. This donation is with thanks to Gerard Roe.
Peter Walsh on Big Beat Radio in 1986 (photo Brian Greene).
Big Beat Radio is especially important to us as it involved both co-founders of Pirate.ie, Brian Greene and John Walsh. The station began broadcasting on June 17th 1986 in a room belonging to the community centre on the seafront in the suburb of Baldoyle in northeast Dublin. There were six founders, all of whom were 16: Brian Greene (Bobby Gibbson* on air), Dónal Greene, Michael Redmond, Peter Walsh, Brian Hegarty and Mark Tynan. John Walsh was a year younger and joined as a newsreader and occasional DJ.
Big Beat was on air for seven weeks of the summer school holidays. The original plan was to go on AM with the copper wires running along the seafront behind the studio but the station ended up on FM. Around the same time, the Carroll’s Irish Open Golf tournament was held across the estuary in Portmarnock about 400 metres from the studio. RTÉ set up a dedicated radio station for the tournament on 96.6 FM, forcing Big Beat to move down to 96.2 at the last minute.
Brian Greene (top) and Mark McGuinness set up the studio (from Brian’s collection).
Power was about 15 watts but the mast wasn’t more than 20 feet off the ground and therefore the signal didn’t travel far. Audio quality was poor with levels very uneven. The single microphone was wrapped in a cloth to prevent popping and taped to a wooden banister which protruded from a scratchy mixer dating from the 1960s. Two turntables, a cassette deck and headphones completed the studio set-up.
A radio theme prevails at the site in 2022. The studio was through the door (photo John Walsh).
The studio heated up easily and the door to the green outside was usually left open, with a result that passing buses were often heard during shows. The room was invariably crammed with friends of the DJ so keeping people quiet during links was a challenge. News was presented from 11am until 6pm each day and was lifted from RTÉ, BBC and other pirates. The newsroom was in a stifling disused toilet with no window.
There was no phone at Big Beat, so the telephone box across the road was used for requests. The postal address was 3A Brookstone Road, Baldoyle where co-founder Peter Walsh lived. Sunshine Radio engineer Peter Gibney (RIP) visited one evening because of interference caused to the transmitter in Portmarnock a few kilometres to the north. Big Beat also ran discos for visiting Spanish students at the community centre next door.
2016 reunion at the phone box. L-R: Dónal Greene, Brian Greene, Peter Walsh, Mark Tynan, Michael Redmond, Brian Hegarty (photo John Walsh).
Big Beat closed suddenly at 6pm on Friday August 8th with Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds. This recording is of the final hour from that day. Two of the Big Beat founders, Brian Greene and Peter Walsh, went on to set up Centre Radio, another part-time station that operated from Baldoyle and neighbouring Bayside from Christmas 1986 to the end of 1988. For more memories of Big Beat, see here.
* No, it’s not a typo: the extra ‘b’ in Gibbson was deliberate because the name was fake.
Brian Greene on air and John Walsh in the ‘newsroom’, 31st December 1988.
Centre Radio closed down at exactly midnight on 31st December 1988 in compliance with new legislation which was supposed to silence pirate radio and herald the legalisation of the sector. From what we can establish, Centre was one of just five stations in Dublin still broadcasting that evening, the others being Capitol Radio, Phoenix Radio (Blanchardstown), Dreamtime Radio (a hobby station in Glasnevin) and of course Radio Dublin which defied the new law.
Brian Greene prepares to close down Centre Radio at midnight.
This is the final 42 minutes of Centre Radio from 2322 to 0000 presented by Brian Greene. The final song was ‘I want to be free’ by Toyah Wilcox, which was the station’s anthem. Listen right to the end when after the final station ident, the transmitter is switched off and 94.2 FM falls silent.
L-R: Eamonn Roe, Tom Berry and John Walsh after Centre closed down.
It was a seriously downbeat New Year’s party at the Mid-Sutton Community Centre in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1989 as the new radio era dawned with only Radio Dublin to disrupt the government’s plans.
Brian and John after the midnight closedown.
Brian’s reflections
Centre Radio in 1988 was the end of a run of four years of my youth where I spent every free hour involved in radio. Not just the DJing but the building, planning and keeping stations on air in oases of time blocks where I could put stations on for holidays or breaks or even weekends. Then came Centre Radio 88 and it was a project without end: full-time, on air daily and gaining real community kudos as we put down roots in Bayside.
As an example of the community roots we developed, the following is a true story. We were a 40-watt station. The transmitter on FM was unusual for the era in that it was a valve transmitter. The voltages in a valve transmitter are high tension using transformers. Transformers degrade over time and melt down, or at least the one we had was dying while frying. We badly needed a new transformer and we took to the airwaves with a promo in our programming asking the community to donate a 600-volt transformer to the station. We had the news item added to the Bayside Parish Newsletter (the notice must have looked odd among the usual Novena of Grace and Pioneer Total Abstinence Association dates for meetings notices). Our prayers were answered as a parishioner who read our cry for help, delivered three transformers to our studio and we were grateful for the community spirit in action. It was a good deed from a good Samaritan (I don’t think I can milk any more puns from this story!)
So it was a project without end until Ray Burke TD of Fianna Fáil announced that all pirates had to shut down by December 31st 1988. We unlike most stations took this to mean on the 31st not the 30th (before the 31st). The period from 1978-1988 for pirate radio or free radio, as we called it back then, saw massive development in the sector (see our paper on the topic here). But following Burke’s introduction of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1988, free radio changed forever and its growth was badly disrupted.
Community radio was neglected in the shake out of new commercial radio. The new stations were tame imitations of the former pirates. It would be seven years before community radio had a chance to start. The Centre Radio crew didn’t give up and applied for a licence as Bay Radio Group. Near FM won that licence overlapping our area in a small way. Centre became Radio Caroline Dublin from 1989-2001 (one of the longest running continuous pirates on air in Ireland). The core gang didn’t break up, didn’t leave radio and many are still involved to this day. We just never got to have Bayside Community Radio and it wouldn’t work now. But something different would work.
Centre was a youth radio service but with enough adults and young adults around and some serious radio heads there was never a bedroom radio vibe to the station. The dedication of the crew at the time was massive. We went out with a bang. And stayed on air to the end. The tapes (archived here) remind me of a time when radio was the social media and through study and archive creation both John and I now know that ‘radio was the first social media’ is not a glib throwaway comment but in fact the truth. TV was and still is not as accessible as radio and radio for me was the medium of choice that has the power – and is yet to have its finest hour. We shall overcome. Only The Strong Survive. Catch Us If You Can. Long live free radio.
A quiet New Year dawns at Mid-Sutton Community Centre.
John’s reflections
It was an emotional time then and the recording still stirs plenty of feelings as I listen back decades later. On New Year’s Eve 1988 I had gone full circle: two-and-a-half years previously I had first cut my broadcasting teeth on the predecessor to Centre Radio, Big Beat Radio, set up by Brian and others in June 1986. I was also involved with Centre from its earliest days and went on to work at KLAS, an easy listening station playing music for my grandparents but luckily located in the same housing estate as I grew up. It was to Centre that I returned at the end of the pirate era, as we worked day and night to keep the station on air throughout Christmas 1988 and right up to the final evening. That marked my final pirate broadcast but the free radio spirit never left me and it is a pleasure to keep it alive through this archive.
We were just kids having fun and nobody lost their job or fell on hard times as a result, but looking back now, there’s no doubt that radio got me through my teenage years, helped me work out who I was and kept me out of trouble – how ironic, given that what we were doing was illegal! What replaced the pirates was but a pale imitation of the golden era of 1978-1988 and the government was particularly neglectful of the community sector of which Centre Radio formed a part. But Centre and other stations gave me a great start in radio and on the back of my experience, radio and television journalism became my trade and I earned my crust from it throughout the 1990s. I’m delighted to be still involved through my local community station Flirt FM in Galway, but will never forgot the excitement of those heady teenage pirate years in 1980s Dublin.
No smiles from Brian Greene and John Walsh as they prepare for closedown on 31st December 1988.
The final two hours of Centre Radio from 10pm on New Year’s Eve were presented by Bobby Gibbson (Brian Greene) with other presenters dropping in to say their goodbyes during the evening. Richard Taylor (John Walsh) and Dave Evans (Eamonn Roe) were also on the final programme and there were plenty of memories of the two years of Centre Radio and reflections on the pirate scene in general.
Eamonn Roe (Dave Evans) on the final day.
There was also criticism of the gap that would be left by the closedown of the pirates but optimism that local licensed radio would be on the air within months. This recording is of the second last hour of Centre Radio from 2204-2304 on 31st December 1988.
