The US Library of Congress Transcript on Irish Pirate Radio Archiving

 This is a transcript of my lecture delivered to the Radio Preservation Task Force Conference in 2022 delivered to the US Library of Congress in Washington DC

Ireland has had a colourful relationship with illegal broadcasting. During the iconic events of the 1916 Easter Rising, the rebels ensured Ireland became the first nation in the world to be declared by radio on their own pirate station. that was 107 years ago this week.

 

In my book ‘A Century of Irish Radio’, I have listed almost 1,800 pirate RADIO stations that have at one time broadcast on our small island from 1916 to present. We’ve seen sectarian pirate stations in Belfast incite violence and direct PARAMILITARIES TO MURDER live on air. We’ve had border blasters broadcasting into Northern Ireland from the South STEALING LISTENERS AND REVENUE FROM UK LICENSED STATIONS and we’ve had pirate RADIO buccaneers earning millions from pirate broadcasting. We’ve seen police raids, street protests, misuse by gangland criminals to sell drugs and unfortunately as a haven for paedophiles. We’ve seen pirate radio of all genres, sizes and even pirate television leading to political change. It’s created media stars, who still grace the airwaves today having got their start in pirate radio and PIARTE RADIO HAS created its own unique place in Irish history.

 

In almost every nation of the world, illegal broadcasters have made their mark. They have been referred to as clandestine, offshore, bootleg or simply pirate radio. They have affected change, this includes legislative change, social change or simply exposing their listeners to a new genre of music. In Ireland, after decades of an uninspired State monopoly with a single channel, from the nineteen sixties onwards, illegal broadcasters demonstrated their engineering expertise with homemade transmitters and exposed a need and desire for alternative radio.

 

This led in the nineteen eighties to a golden era of illegal broadcasting that challenged the State. A plethora of pirate stations, as many as 150 on any given weekend, exposed the need for change and an appetite for radio. Some of these stations became known as super pirates using imported strong powerful FM transmitters with slick American style programming, garnering millions of euros in advertising. An out of date law dating back to the foundation of the State in 1926 was found to be full of loopholes with the maximum fine of just £50, equivalent to one 3 sec ad on Radio Nova, who by 1983 was one of the most popular pirates with a 70% listener rating in Dublin. This allied with the political instability of the nineteen eighties, with numerous changes of Government, it was not until 1988, when new stiffer anti-pirate laws were introduced and an alternative Independent commercial legal network was established for both radio and television, did the issue of pirate radio abate. Pirate broadcasting continues to this day but it has returned to the hobby and occasional weekend broadcasts, mainly for genres like dance and garage music not aired on national or local radio.

 

Without pirate radio especially in Dublin, you may never have heard of U2. When they produced their first four track demo tape, the national broadcaster would have no airtime for them but pirate stations such as Capital Radio and Big D Radio, where in 1978 the band gave their first radio interview. they plugged this up an coming band forcing the national broadcaster to take notice and as they say the rest is history.

 

But what of that golden era, a period from 1978 to 1988, that changed the Irish radio landscape? How did an official Irish Pirate Radio Archive come into existence? Why and what was the importance of those stations? Were these broadcasters and the associated industry around those stations to be consigned to history? Forgotten? Was their impact on the broadcasting and social history of Ireland to be ignored? How would future generations of scholars analyse and report on these stations especially as the years moved on. There were a number of fanzines and two web sites that covered the Irish pirate radio scene. The most comprehensive one was the DX archive, run by Ian Biggar, Gary Hogg and Ken Baird but they were based in Scotland and they made tours of Ireland recording and photographing stations but they could only do so much. Then John Fleming began his Radiowaves site. There were two magazines in the Eighties, ‘Anoraks Ireland’ which had replaced the Free Radio Campaign’s ‘Sounds Alternative’ that was dedicated to the pirates of the 70s, and the Blackpool based Anoraks UK, who could monitor many of the east coast of Ireland stations across the Irish Sea. When the pirate era ended, apart from the DX archive it all stopped. While I admire and we as a radio history community are thankful for the DX Archive in Scotland, surely, we the Irish could do better. After a trip to a radio conference in Luxembourg and at the back of a bus returning from the Europe 1 transmissions site, myself, Brian Greene and John Walsh had a meaningful discussion as to how we should try to preserve Irish radio history and in particular pirate history.

 

currently The State broadcaster has an archive department but they have expensively monetized its use. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland provides funding for radio archiving through a fund, but at present it’s not available to archiving pirate radio. At its launch in 2013 they said,

quote ‘the scheme seeks to contribute to the preservation of Ireland’s broadcasting heritage by supporting the development of an archiving culture in the Irish broadcasting sector’. Unquote

In a report in 2017 it reported,

Quote ‘It is generally understood there is a maximum ten years left within which to save the global analogue broadcast material collection. The race against time is compounded by – Degradation of material and diminished expertise to do the job.’ Unquote

To dispel that notion, the work we have been carrying out are archives dating back over 40 years. From 2013 to 2017 just 14 projects shared €5million in grants and  it said that these supported the historical and cultural value of the broadcast material archived.

 

This then is my personal journey, a road map perhaps for others to follow to archive pirate radio. In June 2017, I organised a meeting in a Dublin pub to find common ground with fellow Irish radio anoraks with a view to the setting up the grand idea of a possible pirate radio museum. This had followed a six part TV series for Dublin Community Television where I interviewed many of those who had been involved in Dublin pirate radio.

 

A year later I embarked on a nationwide tour with an exhibition to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the 1988 Wireless Telegraphy Act and the creation of the independent sector. The exhibition had a two-fold ambition, firstly to draw attention to the significant role in both radio and social history terms that pirate radio had contributed to the broadcasting landscape in Ireland and secondly to seek out the avalanche of valuable archives that remained in private hands. These archives, from many of those who worked in pirate radio, would help to draw a more complete picture of the colossus impact illegal broadcasting had made on the Irish radio landscape.

 

I hoped to educate a new generation of scholars as to the breadth and depth of these illegal broadcasters. I aimed to gather as much memorabilia both audio and physical of the period . The exhibits initially consisted of my own personal collection and small collections donated to me including those of the late Alan MacSimion. One of the centre pieces of the exhibition was a pirate radio transmitter built in a biscuit tin by the late Sean McQuillan in Monaghan which was used by the writer Pat McCabe (Breakfast on Pluto etc) for his pirate station Radio Butty.

 

The response and interest was overwhelmingly positive, a real sense of nostalgia.  I visited Tallaght (the first exhibition), Cork, Waterford, Dungarvan, Limerick, Galway, Carlow and at Dublin City where it became the centre of press attention when one of the candidates in the then Irish Presidential election and former pirate broadcaster Gavan Duffy visited the exhibition. As an amateur radio historian and curator, I realised quickly that the donated material required expert curation, storage and digitisation. With the assistance and guidance of David Meehan and Mark O’Brien at the media and history departments of Dublin City University, the Irish Pirate Radio Archive was created and opened at the Glasnevin based University. This would be a unique archive in a university setting, as pirate radio is a global phenomenon. The media launch took place at a press conference chaired by former broadcaster Stuart Clark at Buswells Hotel in the shadow of the Irish parliament building.

 

This was followed by another unique event held at the Ballsbridge Hotel, an oral history day. Organized by John Walsh and Brian Greene of radio.ie, the two men had set up the Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive through their excellent pirate.ie. Over one hundred of those who found themselves involved in and launched careers through pirate radio attended the event and had their experiences recorded. The authorities at DCU had felt that they would be unable both in terms of space and finances to offer a home to the audio element of the donations.

 

Another curator of Irish pirate history is John Fleming at radiowaves.fm. John was an early pirate curator before taking a personal break but returning with a new and improved radiowaves.fm. Like those I have mentioned already, as fans of Irish pirate radio, our go to fanzine in the nineteen eighties to keep up with station activities was ‘Anoraks Ireland’ created and run by Paul Davidson. Paul not only amassed a massive collection of photographs, rate cards, press clippings and publicity material from the many hundreds of pirates that at one time cluttered the Irish airwaves, but he also recorded thousands of hours of broadcasts across Ireland. This was a unique and invaluable collection documenting the diversity and activity of pirate stations.

 

However, when the pirates closed in 1988 and were replaced by the independent commercial sector, Paul, for want of a better description disappeared suddenly from the scene and this unique collection seemed lost. There were no more fanzines, no more recordings for sale and no further response from correspondence with the Anoraks Ireland address. There was speculation, especially with the advent of social media, that he had moved house and that his collection was put in a skip, perhaps he had moved out of the country or worst of all had he passed away without getting the recognition for his contribution to reporting on pirate radio history. At various pirate radio enthusiast gatherings, there would be the question ‘what happened to Paul?’ followed by speculation and a regret that this collection was lost.

 

it seemed important that I at least tried to detect what had happened to both Paul and his collection.  What followed, after getting advice from a private detective friend on how to trace missing people, was a detective story worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Eventually my hard work and many dead ends paid off and at Christmas 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, I elicited a response. Paul was alive and well, living still in Dublin but more importantly still had his collection. After numerous telephone conversations, explaining to Paul what we were doing, how important his extensive collection would be, he agreed to donate his entire collection to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive.

 

I made three trips with my daughter to his residence and collected a treasure trove of material. The physical memorabilia consisting of advertising rate cards, over 5,000 photographs, press clippings, press releases and employment contracts goes to DCU in Glasnevin, with the thousands of tapes to be divided and digitised by pirate.ie, radiowaves.fm and the UK based DX Archive. These tapes are now being made available to the public, along with background stories and context on the three websites. paul died suddenly on christmas day last year.

 

As a voluntary effort, this is unique in the protection of invaluable archives in Ireland and immense credit must go to the archivists at the three sites. Media academics and students owe them a huge debt of thanks for their honest endeavours in the often time consuming digitization of C60 and C90 tapes sometimes having deteriorated over the many decades since they were recorded. Some of these recordings are now a half century old. But the work doesn’t stop there are we try to gather the strands of a complicated and colourful history of Irish pirate radio together. I acknowledge those anoraks who collected personal archives and memorabilia and managed to keep these safe over the years and have now generously donated them, never easy to part with something so personal. Further donations have come from both North and South of the Irish border. Unity in pirate radio.

 

Hopefully we can encourage both professional and amateur radio historians across the world to not ignore the valuable contribution of illegal broadcasters. Many countries have had pirate radio whether simply for music, in support of causes or political pirates and these have generated free radio campaigns in Germany, France, Canada, Australia and even here in the United States and these should be remembered, catalogued and recorded. It is vital to have a greater understanding of the need for, the contribution of and the scale of pirate radio across the world.

 

For us. pirate radio shone a light on dull, dark Ireland and for that as a nation we should be thankful and praise the contribution of all those pirate broadcasters across Ireland who have made a difference.

Why did Irish Pirate Radio Flourish in the 80s? What were the 1926 WTA Loopholes?

 

The Aurelia

During what was known as the golden era of Irish pirate radio in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the raiding of pirate radio stations in Ireland almost stopped. Up to 1977, if you operated an illegal radio station you would be subject to a raid by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs backed up by Gardai and charged under the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act. This was invariably followed by a court appearance and a fine but it all changed in 1977. The 1926 law was drafted just as radio broadcasting was in its infancy and setting up a radio station was a complicated, expensive engineering feat but as technology changed and getting on the air became cheaper, in a nation of a monopoly one station state broadcaster, RTE, pirate radio had the fertilizer to flourish and flourish they did. But why was the 1926 Act unfit for purpose as pirate radio moved from late night, weekend hobby pirate radio to the super pirates of the 1980s like Nova, Sunshine and ERI generating millions of pounds in revenue. The reason, a ship but not in the sense of offshore pirate broadcasting such as Radio Caroline or Radio North Sea International.

 

It was built and launched from a Polish shipyard in 1974 and was destroyed by fire while being refitted at Lisbon in August 1979, but in those five years the two-thousand-ton factory fishing ship ‘Aurelia’ left its mark on maritime, legal and broadcasting history on two continents. It was a registered vessel owned by the Burgas based Oceanic Fishery Company in Bulgaria. It initially fished off the British coast and was boarded a number of times by British naval fishery protection vessels including HMS Chowton in October 1974. But it’s first major brush with the law was on September 27th, 1976, when under the captaincy of Jordan Kostan, from Valkanou, Bulgaria, she was detained off the Cork coast by the Irish Naval vessel L.E. Grainne under Commander Peter Kavanagh for illegally fishing inside the Irish territorial twelve-mile limit. She was escorted into Cork harbour, and the captain was arrested and charged. He was fined the maximum under the then legislation of one hundred pounds, but his gear and catch were seized and confiscated and valued at £102,000 by Mr. Justice Carroll, the largest seizure from a fishing vessel in the history of the State. To complicate matters when the seized fish was being off loaded at the request of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries a strike took place at the port. The Evening Echo reported,

‘The work stoppage began last Friday when the dockers, some forty of them, walked off the Aurelia where they had been unloading confiscated frozen fish since the previous Wednesday. The dispute arose over an alleged claim for "hardship money" because of the fact that the fish had to be unloaded from cold rooms.’

A day later the strike was settled and the fish valued at over fifty thousand pounds was off loaded and taken to Kerry.

 

But the captain decided to appeal the lower court judgement to the High Court and in a judgement by Justice McWilliams in March 1978, the forfeiture of the gear and catch was deemed unconstitutional as the value of the seizure exceeded the maximum £100 fine. This judgement was applied to subsequent fishing trawler seizures especially those of Spanish trawlers in the late seventies until the law was tightened.

 

The unforeseen knock on effect of Justice McWilliam’s decision was that it would be applied to the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act when a case against the pirate radio station Radio Dublin and its then operators Eamonn Cooke and Don Moore was brought. Following a raid on the station in August 1976, the subsequent court case discovered two loopholes in the antiquated law. Firstly, it was shown in court that the broadcasting equipment seized by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the Gardai could have been used for something other than broadcasting such as DJ training and secondly the precedent set by the ‘Aurelia’ was applied and as the value of the equipment seized from the Cabra based station exceeded the maximum fine of £50, the seized equipment had to be returned to the operators. This was later applied to the super pirates in 1983 when Radio Nova and Sunshine Radio, who were making millions from advertising. When they were raided, the maximum fine, still just £50, was levied but they had all their seized equipment returned on the conclusion of the case.

The ‘Aurelia’ returned to Cork and collected its confiscated gear and they were reimbursed by the Department for the catch seized. Rather than risk fishing off the Irish coast, the vessel, now under Captain Ivan Presnakov (1932–2003), headed across the Atlantic and together with another Bulgarian vessel the Ofelia and two Russian fish factory ships began fishing off the Argentinian coast.

 

The Argentinians were even less pleased than the Irish that their fishing grounds were being illegally raided. On October 1st 1977, three Argentinian naval destroyers intercepted the Aurelia and the three other vessels. The Navy fired at the two Bulgarian vessels when they refused to heave to and be boarded. The ‘Aurelia’ was hit three times and one crew member, Nestor Tulev, was seriously wounded and several others injured. Tulev was airlifted by helicopter to a nearby aircraft carrier where he underwent emergency surgery. During the boarding, a small naval boat overturned and three Argentine sailors, Carlos Gonzalez, Ponciano Gonzalez and Jose Burak were drowned. The Ofelia and the two Soviet trawlers, the Franz Hals and the Prokopevsk, arrived in Puerto Madryn on 2 October escorted by the Argentine Navy. The ‘Aurelia’ was so badly damaged that it had to be towed to Puerto Madryn. At the height of a cold war, the US State Department secretly reported their concerns that the Russian Bulgarian infraction of Argentine sovereignty was part of a communist plot to destabilise Argentina which at the time was suffering the brutal military junta of Jorge Videla, who had deposed Isabel Peron.

 

Once the ‘Aurelia’ was released by the Argentinians, it travelled back across the Atlantic but it had been so badly damaged from the Naval gunfire, it required a refit. It was in a Lisbon shipyard when it was badly damaged by fire. It was then towed back to Bulgaria where she was broken up. Two small islands in the Antarctica are named after the Argentinian incident, Aurelia Island and Presnakov Island.

 

And as a result, the 1926 Irish Wireless Telegraphy Act was surpassed and impotent. When Dublin pirate Radio Nova was raided in December 1983 after opening a pirate television station, owner and operator Chris Cary was fined the maximum under that law €50, equivalent to 3 seconds of advertising on Radio Nova, who by 1983 enjoyed a 70% listener rating on the Dublin airwaves. The Evening Press reported after Nova’s court appeared following a May 1983 raid,

“Mr. Stewart said that while the legislation provided for the forfeiture of this equipment, and a maximum fine of £50, on conviction, he had been informed that the State was not seeking such a forfeiture. Justice Wine said that Nova had saved the State considerable expense and time in pleading guilty to the charge. He was glad to see that the Minister was not seeking forfeiture of the equipment, so he would just fine the company £25.”

 

When Robbie Robinson , owner of Sunshine Radio appeared in court also following the May 1983 raids, the newspapers reported,

“Sunshine Radio, one of the Dublin pirate stations, is to have £50,000 worth of equipment which was seized during a Garda raid last May, returned to them, the District Court was told today. The station, which operates from the Sands Hotel, Portmarnock was fine £20, after pleading guilty to a summons for illegal broadcasting brought against them by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Justice Hubert Wine ordered that the broadcasting equipment be returned to the stations boss, Mr. Robbie Robinson.”

It was stated in the Dail that,

On 18 October 1983, in Dublin District Court No. 2, District Justice Wine made a restoration order with regard to the broadcasting equipment which was returned after a fine of £20 had been paid. Justice Wine dismissed Sunshine Radio, saying that he favoured competition in broadcasting and hoped that the situation would soon be cleared up.

Former Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Padraig Faulkner told his Dail colleague in 1985,

“When I was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs raids were carried out on pirate stations. Some stations were shut down and equipment seized. The Department found itself beset by all kinds of legal entanglements as a result. It was clear that effective action could not be taken as the law stood. One case that comes to mind relates to a judgement which cleared the defendants on the basis that, as the actual transmitter was not present when the raid took place, it was held that the remaining equipment could be used for purposes other than illegal broadcasting. The case was dismissed. In another case the Department seized equipment but later had to hand it back because of a technicality. In the latter case the public could not understand why the equipment had to be returned and there was much adverse comment in respect of that incident. It was because of a wide variety of matters resulting in decisions by the courts, the reasons for which the public could not appreciate, that there was a danger in the public mind that the law was being brought into disrepute. It became clear that new legislation was needed to deal with the matter and so the Broadcasting and Wireless Telegraphy Bill, 1979 was prepared and circulated to Deputies by me.”

A new Wireless Telegraphy Act was introduced in 1988 increasing significantly the penalties for illegal broadcasting and legalised independent commercial and community radio licensing was introduced bringing independemt radio on the air in 1989.

The First Irish Television Channel 1951

 

"How are we going to keep them on the farm after they've seen Paree?

We are all aware that RTE television began on December 31^st, 1961, with a gala evening broadcast live from the Gresham Hotel. The show was hosted by Eamon Andrews and featured a less than enthusiastic introduction from President Eamon DeValera. However, RTE was not the first television channel on the island as BBC NI TV went on air in July 1953, in time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II while the commercial Ulster Television first broadcast in October 1959. But before any of these, artists such as Barbara Mullen, celebrated pianist Charles Lynch, artist Sean Keating and the Comerford Irish dancing trio, crammed themselves into a small television studio in April 1951 and broadcast live, the first television station and programme to be broadcast from and to the Republic of Ireland.

 

It was horse show week, and as with 1923 when the RDS was at the centre of the first Government sanctioned radio station 2BP, they Ballsbridge venue was to host the first ever live television programmes created for an Irish viewing audience. As one newspaper headline termed it ‘Irish Television Was Born Last Night’.

 

Pye, with their Irish headquarters located in Dundrum, flew in seven and a half tons of equipment worth £30,000 including transmitter, aerial and cameras via Aer Lingus to Dublin Airport. The transmitter was installed in the grounds of the RDS and an aerial erected. A studio was constructed in the tea rooms at the rear of the grandstand, and the channel was ready to air.

A marquee was erected in the grounds and television sets installed where visitors could watch live the show jumping from the main arena. But if anyone rich enough to own a set in the greater Dublin area, reception would have been excellent. The main reception for the first broadcast was held before an invited crowd of 200 at the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street where twenty TV sets were set up for everyone to get a view of Irish television. Broadcasts continued throughout the five days of the Spring Show week. Commencing on May 1^st telecasts took place between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. from the studio, and after that the cameras would move to the horse jumping arena, with the events being televised with a running commentary provided. Sets were available to watch on in the special tent and in the members dining hall.

 

The opening broadcast was a 45-minute show with Ria Mooney acting as producer and director. The shows for the rest of the week were produced by Roy Croft. Ria was a stage and screen actress, artistic director of the Abbey Theatre from 1948 to 1963, and later director of the Gaiety School of Acting. She was the first female producer at the Abbey Theatre. She also was instrumental in setting up the RTE Players in 1947.

The Irish Independent reported,

The show was first-class and of a very high professional standard. It was compered by Barbara Mullen, who did not have much time to arrange with Hia Mooney all the rehearsals for the production. First of all, Miss Mullen welcomed all the viewers, and then the camera moved to Charles Lynch, the celebrated pianist, a T.V. veteran since 1937, who did wonders with a piano. Miss Mullen charmed for a while again and then there was shown a film of the operations of the B.B.C.'s television service behind the scenes. This was followed by the famous Comerford Trio of ' Irish dancers, -who performed to the accompaniment of violins and Uilleann pipes. Next Miss Mullen moved across the set to Mr. John Keating, President of the Royal Irish Academy, who was busy with a canvas, and had a friendly chat with the famous artist. Thomas Studley of Radio Eireann then gave some wonderful samples of impersonation of some distinguished persons. Angela O'Connor, of the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society, seemed to enjoy her first television performance as she sang " La Belle Parisienne." The real merit of television was displayed in the scene from Donagh MacDonagh's " Happy as Larry " in which Liam Foley and Ita Little performed to such great advantage. The whole show was a credit to everyone connected with it. and though only an experiment it was a splendid pointer to what could be done should a start be made on television in this country.

 

Roy Croft was a stalwart of Radio Eireann. He was born Harry Roycroft in 1922 and was a natural entertainer. He began to compere and organise variety shows and this led to Roy replacing Eamon Andrews at the Theatre Royal as the host of ‘Double of Nothing’. This exposure thanks to Andrews’s departure to London, gained recognition at Radio Eireann. Roy originated Beginners Please, Ireland's first broadcast talent show. In the days when radio was under the direct control of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, there was a reluctance to allow the public near a microphone, but Roy persuaded the station to take a chance. It was an unqualified success, and Roy took the show around Ireland with a system of regional heats. His catchphrase, "the beginners of tonight may be our stars of tomorrow". The show opened the door for some of the best-known Irish entertainers including the first on air performances by Joe Dolan, Val Doonican, Paddy Crosbie of ‘School Around the Corner’ fame and The Harmonichords, who later renamed themselves as The Bachelors. In 1961, Roy compered a talent show in Cork as they sought new talent for the upcoming launch of RTE’s television service. The winner of that competition was a thirteen-year-old Rory Gallagher. In 1978 Roy was the chairman of the judging panel in Limerick when a young Dublin rock band won first prize, U2.

 

In the 1960’s when Roy married his wife encouraged him to get a ‘proper job’ and Roy left Radio Eireann and joined Guinness’s as a promotions manager and remained with the brewery until his retirement. He passed away in 2013.

Thomas Studley according to the Equity website

Prior to joining Radio Éireann, Tom had already established himself as a stage actor, featuring in many Abbey Theatre plays. The constrictions of radio work limited his later appearances there, to “King of the Barna Men” in 1967, “Aaron Thy Brother” in the 1968 Dublin Theatre Festival and “The Drums of Father Ned” in 1985.

An extremely good mimic, Tom made memorable broadcasts as Sean O’Casey and Bernard Shaw, and on retirement, had amassed an amazing total of more than 1,000 radio performances.

Studley died in September 2014.

The instrumentalists The Comerford Trio were a Dublin Ceilidh band with an award winning a dancing troupe from the 1930s under Lily Comerford. The musicians were Marie McCrystal (Fiddle), Christina Sheridan (piccolo) and Mrs Davenport (piano).

                                                  

Barbara Mullen was an American-born actress well known in Britain later for playing the part of Janet McPherson, the in Dr. Finlay’s Casebook on television. 

Mullen's parents were Pat and Bridget. Her father was from a fishing family on Inishmore island off the coast of Galway. He met his first wife, Bridget in South Boston, Massachusetts, where she had emigrated from Galway with her late husband, Patrick Crowe. Mullen was born in Boston. She made her stage debut as a dancer at the age of three. When her father returned to Aran, later contributing to the making of Man of Aran, the classic documentary film by Robert Flaherty, while her mother stayed in the U.S. to bring up their 8 children. Barbara would later marry John Taylor who was the cameraman on the Man of Aran. Mullen sang and danced in various theatres all over the U.S. and then moved to the UK in 1934 and began appearing on BBC radio including The Irish Half Hour. 

Barbara Mullen

The Irish Half Hour was a BBC wartime radio show that began on Tuesday November 11th 1941. It featured artist was the great Irish singer Count John McCormack who had been living in London at the time. The first show featured mostly music from McCormack and the BBC Orchestra, conducted by Leslie Woodgate. That show was compered by future celebrity author Leonard Strong, whose parents were Irish.

 

The following week November 22nd, it was a different type of show now featuring Jimmy O’Dea as his famous incarnation as Biddy Mulligan, the Pride of the Coombe and sketches and skits featuring the fictional rural Irish town of Ballygobackward. O’Dea ignored the threat of German U-Boats in the Irish Sea to travel back and forth to the UK to record the shows in Bristol. In total up to the final episode on December 3rd, 1943, which was unusually pre-recorded to accommodate O’Dea’s panto rehearsal at the Gaiety. In total eighty episodes were aired. The Radio Times advertised,

‘The Irish Half Hour with Jimmy O’Dea and Barbara Mullen specially recorded for Irish men and women in the Forces. Compere, Joe Linnane. Singer, Robert Irwin. Writer, Harry O'Donovan.’

 

The show was aired on the BBC Forces service although some Irish regional newspapers were referring to it was the BBC Alternative Service avoiding the militaristic term of ‘forces’.

According to the RDS report,

Four hundred people at a time were able to view demonstrations of television in a portion of the Band Lawn specially arranged for the purpose. These demonstrations were given by Messrs. Pye (Ireland) Ltd. A studio was fitted, up in the tea gardens at the back of the grandstand and stage shows, Jumping Competitions, Grand Parades and other features of the Show were televised daily. In addition to the television receiving sets installed on the Band Lawn, a number of sets were placed in the. Members' Hall for the use of Members. On the Saturday previous to the Show Messrs. Pye (Ireland) Ltd. gave a reception and dinner in the Gresham Hotel and a special show televised from the studio in Ball's Bridge was seen by about three hundred guests, including the President of the Society and some members of the Council: For the purpose of giving this first public demonstration of television in Dublin, £30,000 worth of equipment was flown from London to Dublin by Pye (Ireland) Ltd. These demonstrations proved a great attraction and the Committee appreciate the excellent manner in which, they were carried through.

The studios were described in the Irish Independent,

I turned the knob and stepped into that modem Aladdin's Cave, a Television Studio. On my left were the artists dressing rooms they have been spared make-up for the Ballsbridge telecasts and on my right the works.

They were the size and shape of three tall steel filing cabinets, except that they were all insides and no outsides. tall blocks of valves and terminals and condensers of a complication that is baffling to a man like me. The first, which ended on top like a film projector, proved to be a film projector, but of the special type which, is known as a " scanner." The next "cabinet" was surmounted by a television screen, and I guessed it was a " monitor ".  The third and last was the transmitter, which is not to be tackled by anyone who feels ill at ease with three-point plugs and fuse-boxes.

From the transmitter, I went through a door into the studio proper and ended up with the television camera. The studio was in odd contrast, the beam microphones, the tremendous battery of powerful lights, and the cameras that occupy it. For the working end of the studio proper had those grey backgrounds with dim black outlines which were once the background of the professional photographer the sort of photographer who took you holding your bowler over your heart while your other hand rested on an antique pillar. Dominating the scene in which the microphones have to be kept out of the picture, is the camera which looks something like a gigantic square-barrelled Lewis gun mounted on a wheeled trolley on which the cameraman sits. Then you stand before the camera, you see a glass eye and when the little red lamp beside it lights you are being heard and seen by the world, for fifty miles around. But what goes on inside it well. I’m afraid photo-electric silvercaseum cells, electron gun assemblies Frame time bases and cathode ray tubes, and all the rest are Greek to me.

 

A corner under the great awning over " the Band Lawn, has been screened off and as far as possible "blacked out ", to hold the sets, on whose bright screens you may enjoy the singing of Peggy Dell and Cecil Nash, the humour of compere Roy Croft, the magic of Albert Le Bas, and many another of our Irish artists, or even see the Jumping In the Enclosure without the bother of looking for a seat on the  stands.

Roy Croft

According to Le Bas’s biography ‘Oofle Dust’,

‘Oofle Dust’ is the story of Albert le Bas, the softly spoken Irishman who was acknowledged as one of the world's most outstanding magicians. A man at the apex of the ancient and honoured craft of magic. A dream that took him from local carnivals in Ireland during the 1940s to the hallowed stage of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the BBC studios, West End theatres in London, sparkling venues across Europe and the USA, as well as appearances before royalty.’

 

It is the story of variety and entertainment in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. From opening Ireland's first shop for wizards and magicians, performing on Ireland's first television broadcast to becoming the mainstay of the hugely successful Jurys Cabaret, Albert shared his dream with Betty, the love of his life. A life strewn with roses. Until the thorns appeared.

Albert Le Bas

Thanks to the Pye television demonstrations, it was one of the busiest Spring Show with over 63,000 attending. Despite the enormous press attention given to the birth of Irish television, Pye did take out advertisements suggesting citizens did not purchase sets as this was only an experiment and BBC transmitter signals were difficult to receive in Ireland. Pye’s efforts were rewarded a decade later when the company won the contract to provide the transmitter network for the new TV service, RTE.

New Book Out Now

 

ON SALE NOW VIA AMAZON OR ALAN HANNA BOOKS, RATHMINES

100 Years Ago, 2RN broadcast its first test transmission.

 

At 6.45pm on this day 100 years ago, Saturday November 14^th the first test transmissions begin

‘Hallo hallo hallo, aye aye aye, hallo hallo hallo’ were the first words spoken by Seamus O’hAodha (Seamus Hughes). This was followed by,

‘Se seo staisiun 2RN Baile Atha Cliath ag triail’ (This is 2RN Dublin Testing)

By 7.45pm, according to an article on the front page of the Sunday Independent, a large crowd had gathered at Hogan’s wireless shop on Henry Street to hear the first transmissions.

Irish Radio History Timeline

 

Douglas Hyde Opens 2RN