Corey: You worked on Radio Caroline during 1966 and 1967 when British offshore radio was at the height of its popularity. In a recent review of “The Boat that Rocked”, you took issue with how the movie portrayed this famous pirate broadcasting operation. Can you reiterate some of your pet peeves on this?
Ian: While I’m able to accept a certain amount of poetic licence in a movie based on a true story, “The Boat That Rocked” reflected very little reality in portraying the way things really were on board the “pirate” radio ships.
Which is a shame because there were enough funny plus dramatic moments in those years to make a realistic but entertaining story. For example...on the first station I was on we had a boarding party take over the station, we were held hostage for a week and the owner was shot dead. (ashore).
As I said in a movie review I wrote after seeing it: “It’s great that a whole generation of British kids will now be aware that it was us broadcasters who were directly responsible for forcing later Governments to legalise land-based commercial radio in the UK.
However I squirmed for the over-long 135 minutes the movie runs watching misrepresentation after misrepresentation of what really went on flash up on the screen.”
For instance, no visitors were ever allowed on- for insurance and safety reasons. The idea you could invite 200 fans and have them running all over the ship is ridiculous when you have generators running and transmitters putting out 50,000 watts. Which makes the scene where the two guys compete to climb the mast even more ridiculous.
The few visitors who did come on board were people like pop stars and entertainers, for on-air interviews, and they had to have special permission from head office in London.
The movie makes no reference to the station even having a head office, which was actually a salubrious building just off Park Lane, but gives the impression the whole operation was totally run from the ship.
It also makes it appear there was only one radio ship, which they call Radio Rock, with one DJ telling his listeners he has 25 million people listening to him. In fact there were at least twelve stations that I can think of broadcasting around the coastline, with about six positioned off London, all with a combined audience of 25 million..
And the movie really totally misses the point when the police attempt to raid the ship to close it down. The vessel was in international waters and outside the jurisdiction of any British authority. A raid like that would have been real piracy by the police.
