Radio 270 memories continued

During the Covid-19 ‘lock-down’ of 2020/1, when people were instructed to stay at home to prevent the virus spreading, former Radio 270 DJ Guy Hamilton organised some virtual get-togethers for offshore broadcasters to chat and reminisce about their times at sea. Ex-pirates from all over the world were reunited from their homes via the Zoom video conferencing app.
 
During one of these ‘Pirates' Prattle’ sessions (as Guy called them) Noel Miller and Steve England talked about their mutual friend, the late Leon Tipler.
 
Steve mentioned that he had some home movies shot by Leon on board Radio 270. Noel offered to edit them together. He added some audio from Leon's collection and some film footage of his own with a commentary and song he had written about the station. The end result is this magnificent 50 minute video, Radio 270 - As It Was. It mainly features a DJ line-up from 1966. As well as Noel and Leon, you can see Paul Burnett, Alex Dee, Dennis Straney, Andy Kirk, Hal Yorke and Pete Bowman, plus crew-members and engineers. Some of the later broadcasters such as Rusty Allen, Ross Randell, Phil Hayton and Paul Kramer can be spotted briefly at the very end. Our grateful thanks to Noel for sharing it with The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. As he says: “it shows how perilously close those DJs were to disaster and yet they kept the music coming, and they had fun.”

Radio 270 did not attract many big national advertising campaigns but, with plenty of local advertisers and the ubiquitous World Tomorrow religious programme, it had a healthy income.
 
The Marine Offences Act of August 1967 forced Radio 270 to close down. During its short life it had earned some £100,000 in advertising revenue, paid off its initial start-up costs and broken even on its running expenses. Most radio stations take around three years to achieve this. Radio 270 had done it in one, but it had not made any profit, paid the shareholders any dividend or the directors any salaries. Given a few more months, it could have begun to make some real return for its investors but the law said it had to close.
 
In June 1967 National Opinion Polls had published listening figures showing that Radio 270 had an audience of four and a half million people. It might not have been in the premier league of offshore radio (similar surveys attributed audiences figures of over eight million to both Radios Caroline and London) but it was very popular. The presenters, engineers and crew had to endure difficult conditions and appalling weather during 270's short life, and they did it with just one aim in mind - to entertain its listeners. And in that respect, it had been a huge success. Radio 270 would be greatly missed.

Our grateful thanks to Paul, Noel, David, Roger, Guy, John, Jeff, Maggie, Carole, Hal, Mike, Robin, Leon and Steve for their contributions.
 
In June 2006 BBC Radio York celebrated Radio 270's fortieth anniversary. Pictures here.
 
In December 2010 a few former Radio 270 DJs gathered for a reunion lunch. Pictures here.
 
We have a number of Radio 270 Top 40 charts. The earliest is here.
 
Back to the previous page of Radio 270 memories.