When Pirate Radio Nova Stole RTE's Treasure

 

For a generation a bad from Derry with a unique sound and a remarkable lead singer, the Undertones and Fergal Sharkey cut a swathe through the charts and hearts of music aficionados.

But their reign at the top would come to a premature halt in 1983, when they decided to split and play one last gig, pencilled in for the Punchestown racecourse on July 17th. It would become headline news at home and abroad and it would generate many column inches in newspapers and music magazine including Hot Press, the NME and Rolling Stone. But strangely the Irish national broadcaster almost completely ignored the event thanks to one of the gigs main promoters, the illegal pirate station Radio Nova. This scandal came just months after the authorities had raided Nova in May and briefly closed them. The only show to give any serious coverage was Dave Fanning’s RTE Radio 2’s rock show, of course Mr. Fanning was a former pirate broadcaster in his own right. The band were playing support to the top of the bill, Dire Straits.

(c) The RTE Guide

The top selling RTE Guide in advance of the gig advertised that ‘the promoter has offered our readers six double tickets for this rock festival’. They failed to mention who the promoter was, Radio Nova in associations with Paul Charles’s Asgard Promotions.

The Evening Herald Monday September 6th 1982

A year earlier in 1982, feathered had been ruffled at RTE HQ, when the Evening Herald ran a ‘Mystery Voice’ competition on the radio. They would offer clues in their newspaper and allow contestants to post in their answers. When the competition began on September 6^th 1982, the advert in the evening edition pointed listeners to listen to the ‘Mystery Voice’ on RTE Radio and Radio Nova, the state broadcasters illegal competition. No advertisement appeared in the next days edition as RTE executives made their feelings clear to the editorial board at the national newspaper. The following day the new clue pointer appeared by rather than naming the stations on which the promotion was running, it was simply referred to ‘on the radio’. Within eighteen months of going on the air, Radio Nova was leading the rating despite their illegal status.

Evening Herald, Wednesday September 8th 1982