Talking of radio, one of the original pirate radio stations - Radio London - is making a comeback this weekend, 38 years after it closed down. John Peel, Kenny Everett and Tommy Vance are amongst the radio legends who began their careers at the pirate, which broadcasted to the South East in the late sixties from a rusting boat in the North Sea. The new service will have a base in the Essex town of Frinton-On-Sea, although its broadcasts will be transmitted from the Netherlands - therefore bypassing British broadcasting regulations (a licence-dodging method first mastered, of course by Radio Luxembourg, and later by Dublin based longwave station Atlantic 252). The new station will also appear on Sky and will webcast online.
It's not the first time a legendary pirate station of old has relaunched itself - Radio Luxembourg and Radio Caroline have both returned in various guises over the years. The problem is that these relaunches often adopt music and programming policies similar to the original which makes them sound very much like the plethora of mainstream classic hits radio stations that already exist. The original attraction of Radios Caroline, London and Luxembourg, of course, was that they were providing young music fans with the kind of music and radio that just wasn't available anywhere else at the time, in much the same vein as the current generation of youth-dominated (and mainly urban music based) pirates that still exist in London and other UK cities. It will be interesting to see if the new Radio London can win itself an audience competing in a crowded market place on an AM frequency.