Little did I know how my whole life would change as a result of that meeting. They told me that they had four thousand pounds to invest and were ready to spend all of it in any way I needed, if I took on the job of making them a ‘proper’ radio station. I had never even seen a ‘proper’ radio station by then, but I knew that Kyrle had, and my mind began to race at the challenge and excitement of a project like this. The fact that I would be paid only added to the excitement.
In nineteen eighty, four thousand pounds was a huge amount of money, and by way of comparison, I was earning about thirty pounds a week at that time. They had only one condition for the job; that I had to have the radio station on the air by the following Saturday. Yes, I had only one week to completely purchase all the equipment, get the desks made, install a transmitter on a new aerial system in a new location, cure any problems and be ready at ten a.m. the following Saturday. I asked for a fee of one thousand pounds of their four with half up front, and they agreed immediately on the condition that I could make it happen from the balance. Michael O’Sullivan, who was one of the four, said that the papers would carry the launch story on the coming Thursday and the whole town would be expecting it on air as agreed. Within minutes I proved just how insane I was then, as I took the job, accepting the conditions and the insane challenge involved. By Sunday afternoon I was on the train to Kyrle in Dublin, and designed the whole system on a notepad while on the journey. No laptops, smart phones or iPads then; the design would come out of my head and that alone. When I told Kyrle what I was doing and the timescale I had to do it, he actually fell off his couch laughing at the sheer impossibility of it all. Then as I told him about my commitment, true to form, and even though he hated the illegality of it all, he agreed to help me buy the gear in Dublin. By Tuesday I was on the way back to Mallow with a goods wagon quarter full of boxes of electronic equipment.
By Wednesday I had convinced Etta to leave me for some days so that I could have the whole house to myself. I had taken a week off work from Larry so that I could construct the studio, first in my kitchen, and if it worked, we would then transport it all to a place called ‘The Willows’, an area that is high above Mallow town. I got it all going, and on the Thursday night we were the talk of the town as we had to lift the finished desk in through the upper window in number four The Willows. It was a sight to see. Even the fire brigade people helped us, and there was a huge air of excitement and expectancy beginning. That day the local papers all carried the story of Mallow’s impending new radio station and the pressure on me became immense. I had the studio done, but now the transmission had to be done in just one day.
I could easily write a book on the beginnings of that radio service, but it’s true to say that it went right down to the wire for me, as by Friday night the transmission was still not working properly. Around ten p.m. that night, the four directors met in the room next door to our studio and obviously were very concerned that this might all fail, yet not one of the four ever said to me, “John will it be on air Saturday?” Noel O’Connor and Pat O’Brien, who were the other two directors, actually tried to encourage me on by saying with big smiles that they had their speeches ready and were going home to be up early for the first broadcast in the morning. Michael O’Sullivan also said the same thing, coming in to encourage me with kind words and then leaving Maurice Brosnan and I alone to deal with the technical problem I was still having. It was a serious problem as when someone spoke into a microphone, a huge hum came across their voice and ruined it. Unfortunately this hum was intermittent, making it impossible for me to trace it. Numerous times I thought it was fixed but randomly it would reoccur. That night by eleven p.m. it seemed to be gone for good, and Maurice pressed me to go home and get some sleep. What he didn’t know was that I had not slept for almost thirty six hours, surviving on coffee, catnaps, and buns. Today I believe that I was mentally cracking up under the strain of it all, but didn’t see it myself at the time. Etta had called to see me and was also worried sick, as I wouldn’t speak to her, but yet I seemed to be always talking to myself. In actual fact, that was my way of going over the problem in my mind, and all I wanted was for the radio to be perfect in the morning, and not let any of the four directors down.
I woke at eight a.m. and the transmitter was humming as bad as ever. I rushed back to the studio, locked the door, and began an emergency doctoring plan where I replaced a vital bit of gear as I prayed most sincerely for success. I was in uncharted waters now, and if this plan didn’t work then all was lost for everyone. By nine fifty five, with five minutes to go, the signal became perfect and a huge cheer erupted from the room next door when I announced the good news. I think I went home and collapsed out of sheer exhaustion, but Cork, especially North Cork, would never again be without its own local radio service. I had pulled it off, and in my own little way, made history that morning. For as long as I live I will always be thankful to those four directors who, like Jack, never lost faith in me. Even when it looked like all had failed, they still believed in me and were sure I would make it all happen for them. I can thank my mother too for a philosophy that encouraged us to believe in ourselves, but the person who really kept me going was Big Kyrl with his philosophy of ‘failure is not an option John’, and ‘the end always justifies the means’.
NCLR, the pirate radio station, began to take off and because it was local, carrying local news made by local people, the number of listeners began to grow very rapidly. We did many novel broadcasts in those days, and on one occasion it was decided to broadcast a special mass for the sick. This was to come from Saint Mary’s Church in the middle of the town. Even though I was still working for Larry, he was good enough to let me troubleshoot the station in lieu of advertising, so I was dispatched to the church to scout out how this could be done. I saw a major problem for us, as our aerial cable for the second homemade transmitter was too short and there was no way to get another one in the time we had. While I’m wracking my brains as to what kind of miracle might be needed, in arrives the newly appointed Parish Priest, Father Denis O’Callaghan, and when he saw my gear he immediately christened it ‘Steam Radio’.
I told him of the problem and without a moment’s hesitation he says, “Sure can’t you bore a hole in the window and get the wire out that way”. These were beautiful new-looking windows and I just didn’t feel right about it, so I asked him again if he was sure it was ok. “God save us man, sure I’m the Parish Priest. No one will say a word to you”. I got my drill and bored a huge hole for the thick cable. The broadcast was a great success and we used that hole many times in later years for many a Mass. The sheer practical ‘go do it’ attitude of the Parish Priest was amazing to me and I loved it. I liked him immediately, and like Jack O’Rourke, we became great friends over the following amazing years. A few weeks later it was decided to broadcast the Angelus Bells at midday and I felt that recording a real bell would be the nicest way to do it. I asked Denis if it was ok to record the bells in the bell tower in Mallow’s Catholic church, and he was so happy that he volunteered to help me with the job. We arrived just before midday and I climbed up the ladder with my equipment. He said he would pull the rope and ring the bell. Bong! Bong! Bong! After a large number of bongs I signalled to stop and he asked if I had been counting. I had not, and neither had he. This was a disaster as now we would have to return tomorrow, but Dennis would have none of it. He says, “We’ll do it again”. This time we both counted so intently that I had forgotten to press the record button, and once again we had messed it all up. “We’ll do it again,” was his mantra and so we did. This time we were almost done when the bloody rope broke. I was getting real embarrassed as well. By then the townspeople must have thought that some fiends had got at the bell, and it’s a wonder the Gardai were not called. Not to be defeated though, Denis made off to the local hardware shop and arrived back with a new rope, and soon we were ready to try again. Bong, Bong, Bong, and that time we got it right. That sound used to ring out all over Nort
h Cork for years and years until, in the end, it too wore itself out and became just a memory of an earlier wonderful era. Later on that amazing priest, as Chairman of our company, would guide us on to legality and ultimately ensure the radio service, which began in my kitchen, would become one of the most successful ones in Ireland, but that was still some years away.
Over the following years the local radio went through many ups and downs, both technically and financially. Always we were striving for more coverage, and in the end we decided to try and get a ‘medium wave’ service going along with our local FM service. To do this we would have to construct a large wire aerial and we simply did not have the room at number four The Willows for it, so I got a brainwave, or as it turned out ‘a brain storm’. We would use a fibreglass pole about thirty feet long and wind all the aerial wire around it. In theory it was technically correct, but in practice the pole both looked like and acted like a giant fishing rod, which I could not keep up in the air. During my brainstorm I concluded that we needed to encase the ‘fishing rod’ in two twenty-foot sewer pipes connected together. These pipes were to be attached to a chimney on the roof of our two-storey house and held in place by numerous stay wires. Once again the local fire brigade came to our aid and what was once a new housing estate soon resembled Cape Kennedy. Despite this being a new estate, not one single person objected to this eyesore. The people were so good then, and we had no Health and Safety issues to worry about either. It was like being in our own Wild West and all one needed was imagination to succeed at anything.
The effort by all had been great, but still the aerial was a total flop. It could not be heard beyond Mallow town, but if you called any telephone in the area, you got a crystal clear signal from our studios. The joke in Charleville became, “Hey cove, if you want to hear NCLR, all you have to do is call someone in Mallow. You don’t even need a radio at all”. This was very embarrassing for me, but we just did not have the room to string up a two hundred foot wire, so I needed to rethink our situation.
Then a friend of Jack’s, a man called Jim Sullivan, came to the rescue and told me to string up whatever I liked outside on his farm, as he had plenty of room.
Etta and I set off, complete with rope and wire, and arrived at Jim’s farm. I climbed up a huge tree of at least sixty feet high with my rope over my shoulder and began trying to tie it off on the tree. Then Jim’s father arrived. He demanded that I come down immediately. Obviously Jim had neglected to tell him about us. Etta tried to explain that Jim had given us permission, but he ignored her totally, and I ignored him totally, as I did not want to climb that tree a second time. He got mad and went into the house, returning with a shotgun. He shouted up to me to, “Get down now I tell you, get down this minute or I’ll blow you down”, menacingly pointing the gun up at me. I came down figuring that no radio was worth getting killed for. We left and Jim later explained that his dad had thought I was trying to hang myself. We all laughed at it a lot later, and once again I climbed the tree, being like a bloody monkey in those days. That aerial did work, and for many years our medium wave service came from Jim’s farm in Dromdowney, outside of Mallow. It never ceased to amaze me how good the farming community were to us in those days. They were always so helpful to me personally and Jim Sullivan was one of the best.
Some time later Maurice Brosnan and I climbed Mount Hillary, which is a mountain also outside of Mallow well over twelve hundred feet high. In the ongoing search for more FM radius, I knew that height is gold and we felt that if we could get on top of a real mountain, then we were made. We found the exact place, and on the way down we got completely lost. We arrived into a farmyard where we were warmly greeted by Gerry and Mary Lucy, also farmers who owned the land at the top. They could not do enough for us when they found out that we were with ‘the radio’. It was decided to set up a transmitter on the top of their mountain and thus began a friendship that lasts to this day. Their daughter Deirdre had a best friend called Laurie O’Flynn, now Laurie Rickard, and that same Laurie is helping me proofread this very book. There are no accidents in life I feel. We got the site working after numerous trials and tribulations, and it became the cornerstone of the pirate radio service from then on. We would continue to use that site until legal radio began in nineteen ninety and we moved to the other side of the mountain, which was even higher.
In about nineteen eighty three we planned to build a new tower for the medium wave service on yet another farmer’s land. He was a man called Jimmy Frawley and he lived in a place called Lisgriffin. The site was perfect and the tower was ready, but almost on the day when it was to be erected, a Gulf Stream Jet piloted by a South American Captain Ocana made an emergency landing in Mallow Racecourse. The plane’s insurers decided to build a runway to get the jet off the ground, and over the next five weeks the captain became a regular contributor to our illegal radio. I know that on the day of the landing, our reporter was first on the scene and I arrived soon after. It was some sight to see. The plane had clipped the tops off of all the white racing posts, as it had literally run out of fuel as it landed. The captain had broken English, but he became an instant celebrity and we in the radio became his local newsletter.
The downside for me though was that the firm who were contracted to put up our tower now had a big contract to build a runway, and we had to wait our turn for the tower to be erected. It would have grave financial implications for NCLR as a company, as by then our costs had drastically increased and we needed the extra radius to make it work financially, and that never came because the tower was late. However, there was going to be a huge media event taking place over the next few weeks and we were right in the middle of it all, even though we were as illegal as it gets. I felt that somehow I was going to be a part of history, as a plane would take off against all the odds; its captain was a friend of ours and I would be broadcasting the whole event being watched by the world’s legal media, RTE included.
Michael O’Sullivan and the captain would become great friends over the course of the next few exciting weeks. The town was buzzing with excitement as the runway neared completion, and then the question we all asked was, ‘Did he have enough room for an actual take off?’, because a line of tall trees marked the end of ‘the runway’. The captain promised us an exclusive interview on the morning that he would leave, but more to the point, he promised to tell us when that morning would be. Secrecy was vital as the civil authorities did not want a huge crowd gathering to see a possible fireball if the plane exploded in the trees. We were sworn to secrecy too, but I had to get an ‘outside broadcast’ (OB) van lined up the night before and that gave the whole game away. The world’s media, who were keeping a close watch on us, actually descended on the racecourse when they saw me at work that night. I had inadvertently given the game away and I got blamed as the one who blabbed, even though I had only told those I needed to help me rig the OB. By ten a.m. the next morning, the whole road was completely blocked with every kind of vehicle imaginable. Camper vans, horse boxes, old vans, cars, and even bicycles were parked all over the place, and thousands and thousands of people had climbed all over these vehicles for a better view. It was the most amazing sight to see and we had a prime view from the top of our broadcasting unit.
We had been on the air since early morning, and at the appropriate time the captain arrived into our unit and began thanking the people of Mallow for the great welcome they had given him. It was quite emotional listening to him in his poor English and knowing too that, unlike the other media, I had placed our van just yards from the trees where he might soon crash. For me at least, that possibility made it even harder to listen to him speak about how great we were, and how much he liked us as a radio station. Then he thanked us all personally, shook hands with us all, and promised to fly back over our unit if he made it, dipping his wings in a salute to the ‘pirates’ of Mallow. We were ecstatic, as to be given legitimacy by someone so famous and being recognized as part of a great media event by television and radi
o services from around the world, was almost too much to bear. We all wished him well, and he left for his jet. Within minutes we could hear the roar of the mighty jet engines in the distance. As it rapidly approached us we all held our breath and prayed for his success. I really did not think he would get the lift in time, he seemed too low and too slow to me, but he did make it with just inches to spare. I actually saw bits of leaves and limbs fly off the trees and I roared so loud with a cheer that I could hear myself over the engines. I jumped up and down with excitement as the plane became a dot, heading west for Mexico. Michael, who was describing the event live, looked deeply disappointed as he felt sure the captain would honour his promise and dip the wing to give us final legitimacy, but now he looked to be gone. As he was about to hand back to the studio I noticed the dot getting bigger and I shouted, “He’s coming back, look, look, here he comes”.
The jet shot right over us, tilting the wings almost vertical while the whole crowd cheered so loud that our microphones were drowned out. The captain had honoured his promise, and that day I was on such a high that I took the rest of it off. Every person was talking about the event and the dipping of the wings for weeks and weeks. We in radio were stars for a day at least. Just recently a movie was made called The Runway, which is loosely based on that famous day. There is even a view that I figure as the pirate radio personality in the movie, but I have my doubts. Still, I did figure in the real thing, and that’s good enough for a ‘dunk’ from Buttevant.
I stand to be corrected, but not too long after that day we got the tower up and the radios improved dramatically. By then it was all too late for NCLR, and the directors had no choice but to hand the whole operation over to the community at a public meeting held in Mallow. The station would from then on be called NCCR or North Cork Community Radio, and Jack and Father Denis would re-enter my story.
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