Pat O’Rourke aka Smurf at CBC, August 1979 (courtesy of Lillian O’Donoghue)
One of the popular DJs on the Cork Broadcasting Company (CBC) was Pat O’Rourke, also known as ‘The Smurf’. His show had a big following, with many listeners writing in with requests and dedications.
This recording is a partial aircheck and begins at 1000 on Friday 15th June 1979. As ever the mailbag is full and it takes Pat a while to read out the letters between records. The show is a great example of how pirate radio made close connections with its listeners and built up a strong local following.
Thanks to Lillian O’Donoghue for the recording and photos.
Alan Edwards of CBC in May 1979 (courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
Brothers Noel and Trevor Welch were both DJs with the Cork Broadcasting Company (CBC) and remained involved with radio in Cork during the pirate era and beyond. They co-authored The Jolly Roger: Pirate Radio Days in Cork, which was published in 2015. In that book, Noel remembers that pirate radio ‘struck a blow for pioneering DJs everywhere when stations first hit the airwaves in Cork in the late 1970s. It was fresh, very risky and a bit of a novelty. We hadn’t heard anything like it before. The pirates of the airwaves set the tone for pop radio in this country’.
Noel Evans (Welch) of CBC in January 1979 (courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
Noel responded to an advert seeking DJs placed by CBC in The Evening Echo. He was working with the Echo at the time and remembers how the advert almost jumped off the page at him. Noel had worked previously in nightclubs but had no radio experience and even lacked the basic equipment to record a demo tape. He had to borrow his uncle’s radio-cassette player and recorded a demo spinning his favourite vinyl singles. Once offered a slot at CBC he had to keep his radio hobby a secret at work because of the suspicion between local press and pirate stations.
This recording of CBC features Noel Welch (known as Noel Evans on air) and Alan Edwards. The recording starts at around 1925 on 15th June 1979 and is partially airchecked. Audio quality is poor due to the age of the cassette and the fact that this was recorded on a tape recorder held up to an AM radio. Thanks to Lillian O’Donoghue for the recording and photos.
Pete Andrews (O’Neill) and Lillian McCarthy, 21 August 1979 (courtesy of Lillian).
We are delighted to launch a new series on the history of early pirate radio in Cork, due to a large donation by Lillian O’Donoghue. Lillian McCarthy, as she was then known, was a dedicated fan of the Cork pirate scene and a regular visitor to the city’s station. She has donated many hours of tapes and hundreds of photographs to our archives and we will feature these in coming months, beginning with a mini-series on the Cork Broadcasting Company (CBC).
CBC began broadcasting on 14th January 1978 announcing 230 metres. The station was first located in the suburb of Montenotte and claimed a radius of about 10 miles. It was set up by music shop owner Don Walsh (known also as DJ Daniels), Dublin-born DJ Stevie Bolger who had moved to Cork to work for a nightclub, and engineer Con McParland who looked after the transmitters. Con McParland had operated Radio Sundown International in the city in the early 1970s. It is possible that the first transmitter used by CBC was the former Sundown one.
The book The Jolly Roger: Pirate Radio Days in Cork by Noel and Trevor Welch described how CBC shook up the Cork radio landscape: ‘CBC had an instant, astonishing impact on Cork’s social scene. Its arrival on the airwaves electrified local youngsters who were desperate to listen to their favourite pop and rock music. If RTÉ was perceived as “stuffy” and conservative, CBC was exciting, brash and willing to try new ideas’.
John Craig, Mark Bell, Tony Allen, Geoff Harris and Pat O’Rourke, 1 August 1978 (courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
Don Walsh is quoted in that book as saying that CBC was set up to try in Cork what was being done already by stations such as Radio Caroline in the UK. The station used sports cars as a promotion in the St. Patrick’s Day parade 1978 but was raided on 22nd March by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and equipment was seized. According to issue 4 of Sounds Alternative, the newsletter of FRC Ireland, CBC were raided on Wednesday 22nd March 1978 whilst broadcasting from 7 Farley Place, Montenotte. However, they returned to the air the following day using a standby transmitter.
An article in the Irish Press dated March 26th 1978 was titled ‘Broadcasting Act challenge by Cork radio pirates fails’. It detailed how Bolger, Walsh and McParland were seeking a declaration that certain provisions of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1926 were unconstitutional and contrary to natural justice. The case was heard by Justice Hamilton in the High Court in Dublin and unsurprisingly failed.
Alan Edwards in December 1978 (photo courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
Although announcing 230 metres (actually 1303 kHz), CBC was reported to be broadcasting on 1394 kHz by UK DXer Dave Small who visited Ireland in August 1979. At that time, station operating hours were 0800- 2400, but sometimes they closed early around 2100. The address was 36 St Patrick’s Quay. In issue 9 of Sounds Alternative, an FRC Ireland team reported on a visit to Cork on Saturday September 2nd 1979. They said that CBC was broadcasting on 215 metres (that would tie in with previously reported 1394 kHz). Transmitter power was estimated to be in the region of 100 watts and they were using a long wire antenna supported by two five-foot poles, presumably on the warehouse roof. It was noted that the sound quality was a little below average, but not bad by any standard. An Irish station list published in the December 1979 issue of Short Wave News listed CBC as broadcasting on 1400 kHz. Lillian McCarthy wrote in her photo album that it closed on 8th September 1979.
This recording of CBC was made on 14th and 15th June 1979 and is partially airchecked. It begins with Alan Edwards from around 9pm on the 14th, who ends his show with a preview of the next day’s line-up. This is followed by a clip of Steve Taylor on breakfast on 15th June as well as Conor O’Sullivan and Susan James (O’Connor). At the end of the tape is a clip of Pete Andrews (O’Neill). There are numerous promos for station DJs doing discos around the city and country, a reflection of the strong connection between the pirates and the nightclub scene of the time. Audio is poor because this was recorded on a portable tape recorder held up to a radio – Lillian had yet to get a radio-cassette recorder!
Thanks to Ian Biggar, Rob Allen and Pete O’Neill for their help with background research.
Atlantic Sounds complements slip (courtesy of Ian Biggar).
The Time World News Service (TWNS) was set up in early 1984 in order to bring the work of Time Magazine to radio stations around the world. A letter from the publisher of Time on April 16th that year said that TNWS was ‘a new entry in radio journalism that will draw its material from the pages of TIME and its 87 correspondents and 32 news bureaus around the world’. TWNS was recorded in New York and broadcast in more than 100 US cities and 20 other countries including Ireland, where it was organised by the late Robbie Robinson of Sunshine Radio.
Atlantic Sound poster from 1984 (courtesy Alan Russell).
One Irish pirate station to broadcast TWNS was Atlantic Sound in Galway, whose founder Alan Russell recalls that they received a special delivery each month with the news features on cassettes.
‘From memory it cost £40 per month – a pint of Guinness was £1.37 back then and £40 would have been an average weekly rent on a good flat or small house’, he said.
It seems that the service was less popular than expected and was phased out from the summer of 1984.
The recording above is an edition of TWNS about the arms race and below is another edition about film releases. Both date from March or April 1984, were broadcast on Atlantic Sound and are donated kindly by Alan Russell.
The newsroom in Radio Nova, 19 Herbert Street (photo courtesy of Sybil Fennell).
Dublin Today was a daily half-hour current affairs programme broadcast on Radio Nova after the 7pm evening news. This untimed recording was made from 819 kHz AM on Friday 10th September 1982 and features presenters Linda Conway and Michael O’Brien with a range of items including a wine review, a preview of motor racing and an interview with a band.
Although part of Nova’s quest for respectability, Dublin Today was a key part of its eventual closure in 1986. The programme was at the heart of the bitter dispute between Nova boss Chris Cary and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), which began in 1984 after presenters of the programme were sacked without proper notice or redundancy payments.
Peter Mulryan’s book Radio Radio (1988) claims that Chris Cary was still concerned about Dublin Today in 1985, describing it as ‘claptrap’ and ‘dangerous and subversive’. However, when the merger of Radio Nova and Energy 103 was announced in November 1987, an hour-long Dublin Today from 6-7pm was introduced, with an eye to the new broadcasting legislation. For a detailed account of Radio Nova’s history, including the NUJ dispute, see the Radiowaves website.
This recording is from the Leon Tipler Tapes Collection, donated to us by Steve England.
