And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #186: (Definitely) BBC Radio Lancashire v (Probably not) Radio Caroline

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 6 December 2013

So, for this week’s Beef Of The Week, we head north into the wonderful world of local radio (not that all local radio is to be found in the north of England, obviously), to wonder how a man could end up being interviewed for 90 minutes about something he did not do.

Appearing on BBC Radio Lancashire’s ‘The Late Show’ with presenter Alison Butterworth, Mark Dean was interviewed and answered listener questions over the course of an hour and a half about his memories of working on Radio Caroline in the 1960s. The problem was, he didn’t really seem to have that many.

He had, he said, worked on Radio Caroline North, the original ship of the pirate station, though he got the name of the ship wrong (referring to it as Mi Amigo, the name of Radio Caroline South’s boat), got the year the station had closed down wrong, and claimed to have never met one of the key broadcasters, Bob Stewart, who presented a show from the boat he claimed to have been on every morning.

Something about the whole thing seemed a little odd, particularly to BBC Local Radio’s political correspondent Paul Rowley, who also happens to be a Radio Caroline expert, having, amongst other things, produced an award-winning documentary about the legendary pirate station.

Listening in to the interview, Rowley contacted the show to explain his confusion and then phoned in to interrogate Dean himself – an exchange you can listen to here.

Speaking to Radio Today about the incident, Rowley said: “Everything he said was either hazy or wrong. So I emailed Alison Butterworth during the show, and she put me on air. I told Mark Dean that no one of his name had ever worked on Radio Caroline, I asked him pretty simple questions about the history of the station, and he didn’t seem to know the answers”.

He continued: “I put it to him that he’d never broadcast on the ship, and he insisted he had. I cross-examined him live on air, and he continued to get basic facts wrong. So I challenged him to admit he was making it up. He maintained he was genuine, so I put it to him bluntly that he was a ‘phoney’ and a ‘fake'”.

It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Dean at this point. It’s not clear if this is simply a lie that got out of hand or if he genuinely believes, for whatever reason, that he was a pirate radio presenter in his youth. Either way, he probably didn’t deserve the grilling he got.

You might also question how he got on the BBC show in the first place. Apparently he was booked on the strength that he’d said he used to be a “pirate” during a phone-in about 60s music. If that’s the entry requirement, then it’s surprising there aren’t more instances of people coming onto radio shows and making stuff up. Maybe there are, but their chosen topics just don’t coincide with the specialist subjects of the Corporation’s in-house political journalists.

Although Dean insisted that he would be able to find evidence that would prove his position, he’s not returned repeated calls to return to the show to explain himself.