James Burrage at WebKanix

On Tuesday I travelled to Birmingham for Johnnie Walker’s book signing. A few weeks back Johnnie was talking on Simon Mayo’s show and although some of the great stories he told aren’t in the book, it’s still well worth finding. Having heard a few documentaries and interviews he gave about the pirates, and then being a Drive Time listener it’s a fascinating commentary.

Johnnie Walker was a DJ on Radio England and then Radio Caroline, pirate radio stations in the 60’s. (If you’ve heard Richard Allinson do the non-stop oldies on Radio 2, the jingle samples a Swinging Radio England one). The Marine Broadcasting Offences Act came in on midnight, August 14th, 1967. Walker was the DJ on air at midnight and continued broadcasting despite the act now being law, joined by the audience of Radio London who had closed earlier that day.The act made it illegal for UK companies to advertise on the stations, and eventually due to non-payment of bills the ship was towed into the Netherlands. Following that Johnnie appeared on Radio 1, some American radio, Radio 1 again, Radio 5 and Radio 2 - I think there might be more.

I started reading on the train shortly after leaving Birmingham and didn’t put it down until Durham. It’s a very captivating read, very balanced and honest and it’s really easy to envisage the setting. Reading the early chapters I surprised myself how much I sympathised with the author - I honestly couldn’t stop reading.

I’m almost half way through, around the time of Johnnie driving a van around London having come off Caroline. I giggled when I read the description of someone overtaking him in an open top Jaguar in Shephards Bush (”It’s that flash bastard Simon Dee“) having seen The Story of Light Entertainment edition on radio last year.

Johnnie Walker presents a weekly show on BBC Radio 2, covers for Terry Wogan and will be on Pirate BBC Essex this August.

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This poorly thought out rambling was posted by me, James Burrage, on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Books. If anyone responds to this post, you can follow them through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.