A Radio West flyer from its days on 765 kHz (courtesy Ian Biggar).
This is the final edition of the popular weekly Radio West Anoraks’ Show a short time before the station’s closure at the end of 1988. Broadcast from Mullingar every Sunday morning, the programme was fronted by station boss Shaun Coyne and a variety of presenters including the late Don Allen, himself a veteran of the offshore stations. Both Shaun and Don are heard on this show along with Willie Harte, Michael Tiernan, Gerry Reilly, John Gartlan, Myles Johnson and Eddie Caffrey. There’s plenty of nostalgia about the pirate era that is about to end and speculation about the new legal regime due to come into effect. Essential listening!
This programme was recorded from 1053-1145 on Sunday 18th December 1988 from 100.1 FM and has been donated kindly by John Breslin.
A small part of the enormous Anoraks Ireland Collection as photographed by Eddie Bohan.
Anoraks Ireland was a one-stop resource for Irish radio enthusiasts of the 1980s and early 1990s allowing them to buy or swap cassette recordings and other materials relating to the hundreds of pirate radio stations that existed back then. The organisation extensively documented the unique golden era of pirate radio in the form of photographs, magazines, detailed bandscans, station surveys and much more.
Earlier this year, Anoraks Ireland founder Paul Davidson agreed to donate his vast collection of Irish radio materials to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive at Dublin City University. The materials, primarily from the pirate radio era of the 80s, offer a fascinating insight into the Irish broadcasting landscape of the time and consist of thousands of cassette recordings, photos of DJs, studios and transmitter sites, advertising rate cards, newspaper cuttings along with lots of other materials. The Irish Pirate Radio Archive, in association with ourselves at Pirate.ie and with Radiowaves.fm, are in the process of digitising the huge collection and are about to start archiving it across the three websites. We all look forward to making this invaluable collection available to historians, students and visitors to our websites. The digitisation teams are John Walsh and Brian Greene of Pirate.ie, Eddie Bohan of the Irish Pirate Radio Archive and Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame and John Fleming of Radiowaves.fm.
Original label of this recording in the Anoraks Ireland Collection.
We kick off with recordings of Cork super-pirate ERI from 1456-1542 on Thursday 3rd November 1988. On air are Pamela Wilson, previously of WLS in Galway and Radio West in Mullingar, and Joe Reilly on news. These were recorded from 97.7 FM in stereo and ERI also broadcast on 1305 kHz (announcing 225 metres). The recording above runs from 1456-1542 and the one below from 1543-1629.
2nd part of Pamela Wilson recording.
These recordings are from the Anoraks Ireland Collection, donated to us by Paul Davidson.
West National Radio 3 sticker from 1988 (courtesy DX Archive).
This is a recording of part the Anoraks Show on West National Radio 3 from December 1988, towards the end of the popular show’s run as the pirates prepared to close down. Station boss Shaun Coyne interviews radio engineer Gerry Reilly from Co. Cavan, who reckons that he set up between 30 and 40 pirate stations in the 1980s.
Shaun Coyne pictured in 1986 (photo by Andy Carter, courtesy of Ian Biggar).
The discussion gives a fascinating insight into the economics and technology of the pirates and there are nuggets of information about how certain stations made big profits and provided much needed work in their areas. There’s also plenty of speculation about the new licensed era in 1989. Following the Anoraks Show we hear part of the final edition of the weekly farming programme Landlink.
This recording was made from 1052-1141 on Sunday 11th December 1988 from 100.1 FM. We thank John Breslin for the donation. Listen to our own interview with Gerry Reilly in 2018 here.
A home-made Centre Radio flyer from the days on 92.5 FM.
Centre Radio was a small FM-only youth station broadcasting from Baldoyle and Bayside in northeast Dublin from 1986-1988. It is especially important for us because it played a big part in our teenage lives: Brian Greene was one of the founders and a regular DJ and John Walsh had his own show also. Centre began broadcasting on 19th December 1986 and was heard during school holidays only. From February 1988, it moved to Bayside and broadcast every weekday evening and all day long at the weekends. It was one of the last stations in Dublin to close at midnight on 31st December 1988.
Prince Terry (Roger Lloyd) on Westside Radio International c. 1987.
This recording was made from 94.2 FM on Sunday 13th March 1988 from 1630-1800. It begins with pirate veteran Prince Terry (Roger Lloyd) presenting a once-off show. Prince Terry was the operator of Westside Radio International, a long-running shortwave pirate and indeed this show was recorded to be broadcast on shortwave the following Sunday. The music begins with oldies but later changes to heavy metal in line with Roger’s taste!
Dave Evans (Eamonn Roe) in Centre Radio on 31 December 1988.
Dave Evans (Eamonn Roe) takes over at about 1740 with more music and community news. The recording was made by Roger Lloyd and is courtesy of DX Archive.
This is another recording of Westside Radio, a station broadcasting from Sligo from 1986 to 1988. On air is Ed Stevens with the breakfast show called Sunrise Special although as he notes, the morning is wet and overcast. He claims that Westside is the only station broadcasting in either Sligo or Leitrim at that time. The style isn’t particularly slick, audio levels are uneven and the station phone is out of order, but there are plenty of ads for local businesses so clearly Westside had an audience around Sligo.
The recording was made from 0800-0932 on 30th August 1988 from 97.6 FM, announced as 97.5. We thank John Breslin for the donation. It seems that Westside Radio closed in the autumn of that year.
