Tuesday 17 June 2014

A celebrity is born on Parkeston Quay

Simon Dee publicity picture from 1964

FIFTY years ago this week, weary Radio Caroline DJ Simon Dee came ashore for the first time since the pirate station’s launch at Easter 1964. If he’d hoped for some rest and relaxation he was to be sorely disappointed.

Fellow DJs aboard the Fredericia mischievously announced on-air that Dee was heading for the port of Harwich – and hundreds of fans quickly gathered at the quayside to give him a hysterical ‘Beatle-mania’ reception.

Dee, real name Cyril Henty-Dodd, a 28-year-old former public schoolboy and RAF man, was astonished by the crowds that greeted him. He knew his stint on the pioneering pirate ship had elevated him to some sort of celebrity status, but screaming girls on this scale was a real shock. He spent at least an hour signing autographs before being whisked away.

The Caroline organisation was keen to exploit the situation and booked Dee for a number of public appearances while he was on the mainland. One of his first engagements on shore was to judge the Felixstowe Carnival Queen competition. Carnival organisers had earlier expressed concern that if their guest came directly from the ship and slipped into Felixstowe Ferry, he could be arrested on the beach, while on the other hand a legitimate landing might see him encounter problems with customs officers.

They needn’t have worried, for Dee’s minders got him back into the country without incident and he turned up at the carnival all smiles, accompanied by fellow celebrity judge Rolf Van Brandtzaeg, a senior executive at Caroline’s London office. After they ‘inspected’ the contestants for carnival queen, they awarded the crown to 18-year-old Felixstowe shop assistant Andrea Cooper.  A day or two later Dee made a surprise visit backstage at the Felixstowe Spa Pavilion to meet the cast and dancing girls from the summer show Starlight Rendezvous.
Dee also rolled up at a record shop in Ipswich's Buttermarket, and again a huge number of fans turned out to get close up and personal with the new pirate hero. The shop was reported by at least one source as being called 'Record Maintenance'. That name sounded unlikely to me, so I am grateful to Ipswich photographer Dave Kindred for pointing out it was actually called Murdoch's - and he should know because he was there to witness Simon Dee's visit!
Adam Faith performed on board Caroline in June 1964

Radio Caroline’s popularity was clear to see from such scenes, and such was the station’s pulling power that pop celebrities were willing to go out into the North Sea to visit the ship in return for having their latest records played and publicised by the station. Teen idol Adam Faith was one such visitor, performing and publicising his new single ‘I Love Being in Love With You’ which he hoped would gain him the rare accolade of 20 consecutive singles reaching the charts (or ‘hit parade’ as then known). Dressed in jeans and black sweater, he was taken to the ship on the tug Agana and returned to Parkeston Quay in the late afternoon, to be met by a crowd described as “girl office workers” clutching autograph books.

Around this time Parkeston Quay also welcomed back two Dovercourt carpenters – Ron Mitchell and Colin Sturch - who had been out to work on the ship, but had become marooned there by bad weather. They’d been hired to make alterations to cabins, but rough weather saw them stranded for days. DJs broadcast messages between records to their wives to assure them all was well and their spouses would be back soon! At one point listeners heard an appeal for a tug to be sent out immediately the weather improved, and when this was done the pair got home after at least four days on board. At the quayside they told reporters it had been very rough out there, but they’d enjoyed themselves.

Also sailing into Harwich looking a bit green around the gills were the crew of the yacht Carmen, teenage electrical engineering students from Leeds, who had been foiled in a bid to anchor in international waters near Caroline. They wanted to set up a temporary pirate station to publicise their university rag week, but instead suffered a night being seasick and scared witless as they were tossed around in Force 5 gales, the choppy sea crashing over the deck and forcing them back to land.

On the morning of June 12, thousands of Caroline listeners began to fret when they found the station had gone off the air. Calls flooded into the offices of Planet Productions in London, where a spokesman attempted to reassure everyone it was a mere temporary blip, but as there was no direct contact with the ship they couldn’t be sure what was going on. It was likely to be maintenance work on transmitters, they said. Suddenly, at around noon, the airwaves burst into life and all was well again.

Meanwhile talks continued about a merger of the two stations out in the North Sea – Caroline and Atlanta – with the idea that one of them would become ‘Radio Caroline North’ and broadcast from the Irish Sea remaining a strong possibility.

The authorities were still in a tizzy about it all. Barrister Jeremy Thorpe, Liberal MP for North Devon, introduced a Parliamentary Bill to force radio stations using advertising to formally register with the Government. He said without this the ships could be vulnerable to any warship in the world that might want to hijack airwaves for propaganda purposes. He said Caroline “currently sings like an offshore siren” but if taken over could quite easily start broadcasting inflammatory, seditious, obscene or undesirable material to an unprotected British public . . . .    


Website: www.robhadgraft.com
Twitter: @RobHadgraft

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