Ray Clark's February 2013 Interview with
Part One with Added Commentary
Here is the text of Ray Clark's February 2013 interview with Ian Cowper Ross which was originally published in two parts here.
KEY:
RED = Ray Clark
BLACK = Ian Cowper Ross
BLUE = Commentary preceded by date of added comment.
RAY CLARK: How did you get involved with (station founder) Ronan (O'Rahilly) - and Caroline? Which came first?
4/8/2021: That statement is based upon an untrue assumption that Ronan O'Rahilly founded 'Radio Caroline', which we can prove he did not!
IAN COWPER ROSS: Ronan came first and Caroline next, obviously. I met Ronan in 1963 - fifty years ago. I guess it was around this time of year. Easter, I think it was. Spring anyway, spring '63, and he was a friend of a friend of mine called Chris Moore.
4/8/2021 = Ian Cowper Ross says that he first met Ronan O'Rahilly around March 1963, and that date is in keeping with the statement made on camera by Allan James Crawford regarding the date when he claims to have first met Ronan O'Rahilly. This means that Crawford and Ross are in agreement as to when they first met Ronan O'Rahilly which was sometime close to March 1963. This is important because all other dates before that date regarding activities between Crawford, Ross and O'Rahilly are unfounded and therefore untrue.
IAN COWPER ROSS: Really there were three of us who started it. The actual true version of events is that three of us started Radio Caroline together. Chris knew Ronan and I'd only met him (Chris) recently but we became great friends and we shared a flat together in Milner Street in Chelsea. He said “there's somebody I want you to meet” and “he's got this idea” and “you'll really like him”. Chris was a hustler of the old school, a Kings Road Cowboy type of guy that used to exist then. They all had an American accent and a Hasselblad and a Pentax (cameras), you know. He used to sit in the Kenya Coffee Bar in the Kings Road and pull birds and drink cappuccinos. It was a great life and it's like so many things - it is fifty years ago - but it's vanished now. It's not there anymore. The Kings Road is there but those people are gone, and the Kenya's gone. I think The Chelsea Potter might still be there. But anyway that life, what was Chelsea (has gone). Anyway I was 19. I had come to London... I was born in London but we lived in Haslemere (Surrey). I had a feeling there was something much more happening to be found, not in Haslemere, so I had made my way to London. I met Chris and, sure enough, this came along and I instinctively knew this was the thing - the swinging thing - that I'd been looking for.
4/8/2021 = This entire statement has major problems arising out of mixing fact with fiction. 1) Kenya disappeared as the name of the coffee shop after 1962 when it became Kenco. That means that this meeting which took place at some time close to March 1963, was in a coffee shop called Kenco. 2) Ian Cowper Ross says that he was 19 years of age and had "come to London". Ian Cowper Ross was born on October 25, 1943, which means that on March 1, 1963, he was 19 years, 4 months and 7 days old. On November 3, 1961, Ian Cowper Ross was 18 years, 6 months and 9 days of age in a Magistrates Court facing charges of crashing a Jensen sports car head-on into a bus at Willington, Derbyshire. At this time we do not know the date of the accident, but it could have been 12 months prior to his court appearance. In court he claimed to be self-employed and living with his parents in Haslemere.
In his novel called 'Rocking the Boat', Ian Cowper Ross claims that in 1959, the fictitious character named Paul Shaw in his novel, was in Beverly Hills, California accompanying his equally fictitious father named Jim Shaw, who was there on business.
6/11/2022 = In 1959 Ian Cowper Ross would have been about 16 years old. One year after his novel was published, he began to assert via BBC-TV that details in the book are true and about him. However, if that storyline is followed, in 1963 it leads to a car wash in Richmond, Surrey which was run by a character described as the brother of Paul Shaw. For this to be a true incident, Ian Cowper Ross would have to have a brother, but he only had a step-brother and no record of such a car wash with the kind of U.S. equipment as described, has been found. Instead, the real step-brother of Ian Cowper Ross did start a restaurant and a car wash with different equipment with another person (not Ian Cowper Ross), and both were located on King's Road, Chelsea and not in Richmond, Surrey!
IAN COWPER ROSS: So we went to the Kenya.
4/8/2021 = This is untrue. As previously stated, the Kenya coffee bar changed its name to Kenco in 1962.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We sat there for hours because Ronan's always late and then he suddenly appears, this little leprechaun, comes in, looks at all these hustlers (Irish accent) “How's it going baby? What's happening here?” In those days you just didn't speak to people like that. Everyone was cool and never said anything. Anyway this guy appears and he looks at me and he had a big impact on me. I always remember Ronan - and I like to remember Ronan - in that way. I'd never met anyone like him. He was a most entertaining, funny guy and everything he told me was pretty well the diametrical opposite of how I'd been brought up at my public school, and so on and so forth. He was Irish and he has strong and legitimate republican credentials. His grandfather died at the Post Office in 1916. He told me that this was all, you know, ‘the 1916 thinking’. Radio Caroline was in line with this type of revolutionary thought. Another thing that you immediately realize when you meet him is how he's influenced by - and probably still is - by John F. Kennedy. If you asked Ronan what he did, he would tell you he was in the ‘why not’ business. I know that's in the book but this sort of thing impressed me then. I thought “yes, the 1916 thinking, here we go”. Then I was told that actually he'd only met me to see if I was cool, if I could dig it, if I was up to it. It wasn't so much to see whether I had the ability to get the money - which they both knew perfectly well... I was the perfect mark really, a complete lamb to the slaughter with a rich dad who - they didn't know this but - was prepared to do almost anything to find me an occupation in life other than crashing cars and getting drunk! (laughs).
4/8/2021 = In the last sentence Ian Cowper Ross refers to his recent appearance in court. We also know that one year prior to crashing a Jensen head-on into a bus, he crashed an expensive motorbike into a shop window! As a teenage kid, Ian Cowper Ross was quite reckless and irresponsible.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We met again later in the afternoon at the Carlton Tower (Hotel). There was a particular corridor there where he (Ronan) had set up, literally, a kind of headquarters. So you'd appear and he'd be there with his documents and his whole bullsh*t and you'd think “yeah, this is a good deal”! The Carlton Tower ambience! So we met again and I had my car downstairs. In those days you could drive around, there was no parking trouble. It was an MGB. He said “don't worry, I'll drive” and he drove my car, my MGB, at about 180 miles an hour all the way to Haslemere with me sitting in the back and Chris in the front, who was about 6 ft. 6. And that's how it started.
4/8/2020 - This same story about the MGB ride to Haslemere first appeared in 'Rocking the Boat'. That was a novel published in 1990 with help from the aristocratic mother-in-law of Ian Cowper Ross. In that book the main character is called Paul Shaw, it is not Ian Cowper Ross. In the following year of 1991, BBC-TV aired a program featuring Ian Cowper Ross on camera in which he claimed that the story in his novel was actually true and about him.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We got there. I know that's in the book too but it is completely true. That part of the book is true.
4/8/2021 - Now, in 2015, Ian Cowper Ross is telling Ray Clark that what he said on BBC-TV was true, which means that his novel was really a cover story for real events. But this statement by Ian Cowper Ross is clearly a lie. Ian Cowper Ross is merely picking bits of his novel about a fictitious character named Paul Shaw, and applying those bits to himself.
IAN COWPER ROSS: So my dad's there, looking kind of annoyed as usual, fiddling around with his tractor. That's what he used to do. He'd chop down trees. He was a real pioneers-man.
4/8/2021 - This is also in the novel about Paul Shaw. So when Ian Cowper Ross, the author of the novel, is talking about "his dad", he is talking about a man with the surname of Shaw, since the character in the book is Paul Shaw. But what Ian Cowper Ross first began to do on that BBC-TV program in 1991, is to repeat his claim that "Mr Shaw" in the novel, is actually the father of Ian Cowper Ross. We know that the true name of Ian Cowper Ross' father is Charles Edward Ross.
IAN COWPER ROSS: In 1963 he was 63. He was born in 1900 so (at that time) he's 63 years old, still operating in the city with his chums, you know, who used to have lunch and do deals. This was the old city - before all the Mrs Thatchers and the red braces. These were people who wore bowler hats - not my dad but most of them, had an umbrella, got the 9.01, had lunch at the Savoy, shook hands on some tremendous god-knows-what sort of insider dealing (laughs) and all made a f*ck of a lot of money doing it.
6/11/2021 - We have now thoroughly investigated the life of Charles Edward Ross, and while there is undoubtedly more information to be found, we can conclusively stated that everything that the anorak community has claimed about this man is totally fictitious! Charles Edward Ross was born in New Zealand and the record of his parents lives are on record and have been on record for the world to read for a long time.
Charles Edward Ross married his first wife in New Zealand and both came to England where Charles Edward Ross divorced his first wife who is the mother of Ian Cowper Ross' step-brother who is also named Charles and given the middle name of Cowper. Charles Edward Ross married a second time and his new wife became the mother of Ian Cowper Ross. At the time the family was living in Chelsea just off King's Road.
We have traced Charles Edward to several places where he lived, all in England. However, for a job, he became involved with a laundry business that had just been taken over by a new owner who branched out into dry-cleaning. This business was located in Scotland. Charles Edward Ross became a director of this fledgling dry-cleaners, and with the help of Close Brothers merchant bankers, the business began to offer franchise opportunities. This business was opening up a new kind of venture in the United Kingdom, and soon that business was buying equipment from the largest manufacturer of dry-cleaning equipment in the U.K.
However, like the Jensen Car Company which was in financial trouble, the dry-cleaning manufacturer - but not the franchise business of which Charles Edward Ross was a director, was under the financial umbrella of the parent John Sheffield holding company called Norcros. Sheffield started subsidiaries called Southcros and Scotcross, which were also holding companies. Jocelyn Stevens became an investor and director of Southcros at least as early as 1960, but there was no connection between Charles Edward Ross, John Sheffield and Jocelyn Stevens.
Although Ian Cowper Ross told a court of law in 1961 that was hearing a case against him for crashing an expensive Jensen Car headlong into a bus, and having previously crashed an expensive motorcycle in a shop window, that his father was a "director of a sports car company" and that his home address was at Hindhead with his parents, there is nothing on record that we have found that indicates any financial business relationship to any sports car company by Charles Edward Ross. It is by inference only where Ian Cowper Ross did crash a Jensen car into a bus, while the court was also told that his father was director of a sports car company, that a jump to a conclusion is made that Charles Edward Ross was a director of Jensen Cars. However, we have been in constant contact with the Jensen Museum and those investigating in great detail the history of that company, and to date no such directorship has appeared on the record.
IAN COWPER ROSS: He was a New Zealander and he had an ambivalent attitude towards the English posher classes, very ambivalent about it. He used to have to deal with them every day but yet he wasn't one of them. He was an outsider, a complete outsider, and there was something about Ronan that he immediately really liked. I mean he just loved the guy. He went overboard for Ronan. I think they had some common bond in being anti-establishment at heart.
4/8/2021 - We can confirm that Charles Edward Ross was born in New Zealand.
IAN COWPER ROSS: My dad, at heart, was anti-establishment but his friends who he rang up that evening were Jocelyn Stevens and his father-in-law John Sheffield who were very much the establishment - absolute figures of the establishment, solid characters - well, I um, I wouldn't call Jocelyn solid actually, he was completely crazy but, nevertheless, not a rebel really, you wouldn't have thought - not of Ronan's Post Office 1916 variety anyway.
6/11/2022 - It would appear that Ian Cowper Ross' father threw him out of his house after his Jensen car crash which resulted in hospitalization and then in a court date. It would also appear from what we have been able to uncover that Ian Cowper Ross was given the job as a junior in the advertising department of Stevens Press Limited, owned by Jocelyn Stevens. In other words, Ian Cowper Ross wrote a novel in 1990 and invented a family and a scenario. There is no connection between that fictitious story and reality. However, Ian Cowper Ross has deliberately crossed-the-line by turning his 1990 make-believe into the 1991 BBC-TV which claims to be true, and then, by enticing Ray Clark to further embellish this fiction as a result of his 2013 interview with Ian Cowper Ross, what was fantasy became a lie when it was palmed-off as a recital of the truth.
IAN COWPER ROSS: So this unlikely group of people came together on my dad's say-so and everyone put in a bit of money - a punt it would have been for them. They were all rich, let's just say, to put it crudely, but they were all entrepreneurs. They all thought it might be great. Ronan said it will make millions a month. It sounded great. He sat there and he gave the spiel to old Jimmy - he started calling my father Jimmy. I couldn't believe he would call my dad Jimmy. You know, the whole idea was unbelievable. You know (Irish accent) “ah Jayzus Jimmy, you won't believe it when you see this one coming”. Jimmy goes overboard for Ronan and, as I say, the whole thing was done in a day.
6/11/2022 - In summation, everything Ian Cowper Ross told Ray Clark regarding this supposed event, is nothing but a lie. It never happened.
IAN COWPER ROSS: (My wife) Bunty sees him (Ronan) from time to time and he always says “oh anyone could have done it” (put up the money), you know. I think it's not unfair to say that he didn't much like my book. He doesn't like anyone taking credit “f*cking with the lady”, all this kind of thing, but actually I'm not quite sure whether anyone else could have done it, or would have done it. And history doesn't work that way. I mean Napoleon won the Battle of Austerlitz. Somebody else may have been able to win it but he won it. He was the one that did it. And we were the ones that backed Ronan, who had faith in him, who really asked no questions.
4/8/2021 - His refence to his wife called Bunty, is his nodding reference to the amazing dual aristocratic families that Ian Cowper Ross married into during 1966, and for that to happen, Ian Cowper Ross had to have met and got to know his wife before that date. This is the reason for his nonsensical alternative explanations about the creation of 'Radio Caroline' in 1964. They cover-up the real life activities of Ian Cowper Ross prior to the date of his aristocratic marriage.
IAN COWPER ROSS: The whole lot, the money, was finally delivered in cash. I remember the day we got the cash. I don't remember how we got it - we may have gone to the bank or whatever - but we ended up with a suitcase with £150,000 - which in those days was a fortune, a huge amount of money - and I know it affected us all in the same way, me Chris and Ronan. There was a sort of baptismal moment when we went to my flat - well Chris and my flat - I know that's in the book too - we just destroyed the place. We threw the money in the air, we smashed every ornament, we danced round the room with Mrs Monday the landlady, you know, and we went crazy. F*cking crazy.
4/8/2021 - In 2015, Ian Cowper Ross was basically telling Ray Clark that the novel called 'Rocking the Boat ' was really the true biographical account about the life of Ian Cowper Ross! That is a blatant lie.
IAN COWPER ROSS: From then on the thing went remarkably according to plan. Ronan went to Galveston. He dressed himself up in a sort of cowboy suit and went to Galveston. Chris went to Rotterdam. Chris had worked on... I think he was a sort of a gigolo or something on a cruise ship! He was a very good-looking guy. Supposedly a steward or in the purser's office but in fact I am sure a seducer of women (laughs) and he was deemed to be our man who knows about ships. On this very slim evidence, he went off with £20,000 - I think I'm right in saying - in cash to Rotterdam and buys this really great ship, the Caroline. If you look at the pictures of it, it was beautiful. I was a ship-fancier, my dad too, we loved ships and boats, and this was a beauty. That was great.
4/8/2021 - This section is absolute rubbish!
We discovered that Ronan O'Rahilly had gone to Houston., Texas in June 1963, but O'Rahilly never admitted this to anyone. We know where he stayed and who he saw and why he went there. We know all of this first-hand because a member of our investigative trio was there and the people who owned and managed the ship mv Mi Amigo in Galveston, Texas, which had been off Stockholm, Sweden, told us the details of his visit. More than this, we are still (2021) in contact with them, and they have recently sent us original documentation that has not been seen by anyone else. It throws an entirely new light on the venture known as 'Radio Nord'. Ronan O'Rahilly was a gopher ("go for this, go for that") and the blarney-mouthing smokescreen for the real creators of 'Radio Caroline' in 1964. There was a reason why the ship that was eventually renamed Mi Amigo was selected to became the home of 'Radio Nord' - even though a different ship had been selected for that purpose by others who were not in the know about the true reason why that project came to be. We know that reason why the switch was made, and although that is something that has never been reported so far, by anyone: it will be eventually exposed by us.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We were all very happy and I remember when Chris got back there was one very funny incident. We were in Ronan's flpeat. He'd bought the ship, Chris had, and we were sitting in his flat with these little girlfriends, Maria - Maria Jose - I still know Maria, funnily enough. She was a great girl - and there was another girl. She was Georgie Fame's girlfriend and Maria's friend. Anyway we were all stoned out of our f*cking minds, sitting round, laughing and giggling, and we'd got this ship! We couldn't believe it. And the phone rings. It is John Sheffield who was the most serious, conservative, important guy you could ever hope to meet and he starts asking Ronan what's going on. He said “we've bought a ship, John. It's a beautiful thing” and John asks him what kind of ship. So Ronan - he was always doing this too - puts his hand over the receiver and (whispers) “he wants to know what kind of f*cking ship it is” and Chris says “I don't know. It might have been a ferry boat” so he goes “John, Chris tells me that it was some sort of ferry boat. If you think about it, in Holland there's a lot of inland waterways” (laughs) and he puts down the phone. It is one of those things when you laugh so hard you never forget it for the rest of your life. We were crying with laughter and it gave birth to this wonderful word ‘inland’. And Ronan, probably to this day, may still use the word ‘inland’. It became a verb as well. You can ‘inland’ somebody so, if you're bullsh*tting them... Ronan would... you'd be sitting there, he'd go like that, he'd go ‘inland’ and you'd be ‘inland’ - which was what he was very, very good at. ‘Inlanding’ was probably Ronan's greatest talent. It was from that conversation when John wanted to know what kind of ship we'd bought. If you think about it, it was the most ridiculous answer he could have possibly given for a ship that was supposed to sit in the bloody North Sea!
4/8/2021 - This section is just stupid. There is a well documented history of the ship Fredericia which was purchased and managed by Wijsmuller - before it ended up at Greenore, Ireland.
RAY CLARK: So Chris had just gone off to Rotterdam on the off-chance of finding a ship?
he
IAN COWPER ROSS: I don't know. I can't remember. We had these people - or Ronan did - these Dutch guys had probably lined it up. He'd just gone to give it the nod I think. He may have searched high and low and found the thing. I don't know. It was fifty years ago. We had these people who in the book I call Vig Moller but they weren't called Vig Moller. I don't know. Can't remember what they were called.
4/8/2021 - Another example of Ian Cowper Ross lifting a fictitious character out of his novel, and then trying to reinterpret that character as a real person working for a real company. But he ran into trouble trying to link that fiction with a real company name, so Ray Clark helped him out!
RAY CLARK: Wijsmuller.
IAN COWPER ROSS: Wijsmuller. There you are.
4/8/2021 - Why on earth Ray Clark swallowed this nonsense wholesale without telling Ian Cowper Ross that he was fed up being played for a fool, we don't know. But it allowed Ian Cowper Ross to continue with his nonsensical story turning fiction into fact.
IAN COWPER ROSS: The Dutch. The whole thing was run by the Dutch, you know, the sea crew, the skipper, all that stuff was done by them and they were the ones who towed it away in 1968 because they hadn't been paid, that kind of thing, with Johnnie Walker still broadcasting.
4/8/2021 - Ian Cowper Ross then added an anecdote about Johnnie Walker and revealed how little he actually knew about events in 1968 relating to the 'Mi Amigo, because Ian Cowper Ross had no direct knowledge of them. Then Ian Cowper Ross switched back to talking about the mv Fredericia:
IAN COWPER ROSS: So probably they'd found the bloody thing - I don't know - but one way or another Chris went, got it, paid for it, brought it... It had to go to... er, am I allowed to talk about this?
RAY CLARK: I think so, yes. You're fine. I don't think you'll get arrested for it now!
4/8/2021 - Ray Clark rode to the rescue at this point, because Ian Cowper Ross had began to tangle his mythology surrounding Christopher Moore, around factually documented events involving Wijsmuller, which collided with the make-believe nonsense spun by Ian Cowper Ross. Yet, Ray Clark was buying into all of this for his interview with Ian Cowper Ross!
[THIS INTERVIEW AND COMMENTARY NOW CONTINUES HERE IN OUR OWN PART TWO OF THE ORIGINAL RAY CLARK INTERVIEW.]
KEY:
RED = Ray Clark
BLACK = Ian Cowper Ross
BLUE = Commentary preceded by date of added comment.
RAY CLARK: How did you get involved with (station founder) Ronan (O'Rahilly) - and Caroline? Which came first?
4/8/2021: That statement is based upon an untrue assumption that Ronan O'Rahilly founded 'Radio Caroline', which we can prove he did not!
IAN COWPER ROSS: Ronan came first and Caroline next, obviously. I met Ronan in 1963 - fifty years ago. I guess it was around this time of year. Easter, I think it was. Spring anyway, spring '63, and he was a friend of a friend of mine called Chris Moore.
4/8/2021 = Ian Cowper Ross says that he first met Ronan O'Rahilly around March 1963, and that date is in keeping with the statement made on camera by Allan James Crawford regarding the date when he claims to have first met Ronan O'Rahilly. This means that Crawford and Ross are in agreement as to when they first met Ronan O'Rahilly which was sometime close to March 1963. This is important because all other dates before that date regarding activities between Crawford, Ross and O'Rahilly are unfounded and therefore untrue.
IAN COWPER ROSS: Really there were three of us who started it. The actual true version of events is that three of us started Radio Caroline together. Chris knew Ronan and I'd only met him (Chris) recently but we became great friends and we shared a flat together in Milner Street in Chelsea. He said “there's somebody I want you to meet” and “he's got this idea” and “you'll really like him”. Chris was a hustler of the old school, a Kings Road Cowboy type of guy that used to exist then. They all had an American accent and a Hasselblad and a Pentax (cameras), you know. He used to sit in the Kenya Coffee Bar in the Kings Road and pull birds and drink cappuccinos. It was a great life and it's like so many things - it is fifty years ago - but it's vanished now. It's not there anymore. The Kings Road is there but those people are gone, and the Kenya's gone. I think The Chelsea Potter might still be there. But anyway that life, what was Chelsea (has gone). Anyway I was 19. I had come to London... I was born in London but we lived in Haslemere (Surrey). I had a feeling there was something much more happening to be found, not in Haslemere, so I had made my way to London. I met Chris and, sure enough, this came along and I instinctively knew this was the thing - the swinging thing - that I'd been looking for.
4/8/2021 = This entire statement has major problems arising out of mixing fact with fiction. 1) Kenya disappeared as the name of the coffee shop after 1962 when it became Kenco. That means that this meeting which took place at some time close to March 1963, was in a coffee shop called Kenco. 2) Ian Cowper Ross says that he was 19 years of age and had "come to London". Ian Cowper Ross was born on October 25, 1943, which means that on March 1, 1963, he was 19 years, 4 months and 7 days old. On November 3, 1961, Ian Cowper Ross was 18 years, 6 months and 9 days of age in a Magistrates Court facing charges of crashing a Jensen sports car head-on into a bus at Willington, Derbyshire. At this time we do not know the date of the accident, but it could have been 12 months prior to his court appearance. In court he claimed to be self-employed and living with his parents in Haslemere.
In his novel called 'Rocking the Boat', Ian Cowper Ross claims that in 1959, the fictitious character named Paul Shaw in his novel, was in Beverly Hills, California accompanying his equally fictitious father named Jim Shaw, who was there on business.
6/11/2022 = In 1959 Ian Cowper Ross would have been about 16 years old. One year after his novel was published, he began to assert via BBC-TV that details in the book are true and about him. However, if that storyline is followed, in 1963 it leads to a car wash in Richmond, Surrey which was run by a character described as the brother of Paul Shaw. For this to be a true incident, Ian Cowper Ross would have to have a brother, but he only had a step-brother and no record of such a car wash with the kind of U.S. equipment as described, has been found. Instead, the real step-brother of Ian Cowper Ross did start a restaurant and a car wash with different equipment with another person (not Ian Cowper Ross), and both were located on King's Road, Chelsea and not in Richmond, Surrey!
IAN COWPER ROSS: So we went to the Kenya.
4/8/2021 = This is untrue. As previously stated, the Kenya coffee bar changed its name to Kenco in 1962.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We sat there for hours because Ronan's always late and then he suddenly appears, this little leprechaun, comes in, looks at all these hustlers (Irish accent) “How's it going baby? What's happening here?” In those days you just didn't speak to people like that. Everyone was cool and never said anything. Anyway this guy appears and he looks at me and he had a big impact on me. I always remember Ronan - and I like to remember Ronan - in that way. I'd never met anyone like him. He was a most entertaining, funny guy and everything he told me was pretty well the diametrical opposite of how I'd been brought up at my public school, and so on and so forth. He was Irish and he has strong and legitimate republican credentials. His grandfather died at the Post Office in 1916. He told me that this was all, you know, ‘the 1916 thinking’. Radio Caroline was in line with this type of revolutionary thought. Another thing that you immediately realize when you meet him is how he's influenced by - and probably still is - by John F. Kennedy. If you asked Ronan what he did, he would tell you he was in the ‘why not’ business. I know that's in the book but this sort of thing impressed me then. I thought “yes, the 1916 thinking, here we go”. Then I was told that actually he'd only met me to see if I was cool, if I could dig it, if I was up to it. It wasn't so much to see whether I had the ability to get the money - which they both knew perfectly well... I was the perfect mark really, a complete lamb to the slaughter with a rich dad who - they didn't know this but - was prepared to do almost anything to find me an occupation in life other than crashing cars and getting drunk! (laughs).
4/8/2021 = In the last sentence Ian Cowper Ross refers to his recent appearance in court. We also know that one year prior to crashing a Jensen head-on into a bus, he crashed an expensive motorbike into a shop window! As a teenage kid, Ian Cowper Ross was quite reckless and irresponsible.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We met again later in the afternoon at the Carlton Tower (Hotel). There was a particular corridor there where he (Ronan) had set up, literally, a kind of headquarters. So you'd appear and he'd be there with his documents and his whole bullsh*t and you'd think “yeah, this is a good deal”! The Carlton Tower ambience! So we met again and I had my car downstairs. In those days you could drive around, there was no parking trouble. It was an MGB. He said “don't worry, I'll drive” and he drove my car, my MGB, at about 180 miles an hour all the way to Haslemere with me sitting in the back and Chris in the front, who was about 6 ft. 6. And that's how it started.
4/8/2020 - This same story about the MGB ride to Haslemere first appeared in 'Rocking the Boat'. That was a novel published in 1990 with help from the aristocratic mother-in-law of Ian Cowper Ross. In that book the main character is called Paul Shaw, it is not Ian Cowper Ross. In the following year of 1991, BBC-TV aired a program featuring Ian Cowper Ross on camera in which he claimed that the story in his novel was actually true and about him.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We got there. I know that's in the book too but it is completely true. That part of the book is true.
4/8/2021 - Now, in 2015, Ian Cowper Ross is telling Ray Clark that what he said on BBC-TV was true, which means that his novel was really a cover story for real events. But this statement by Ian Cowper Ross is clearly a lie. Ian Cowper Ross is merely picking bits of his novel about a fictitious character named Paul Shaw, and applying those bits to himself.
IAN COWPER ROSS: So my dad's there, looking kind of annoyed as usual, fiddling around with his tractor. That's what he used to do. He'd chop down trees. He was a real pioneers-man.
4/8/2021 - This is also in the novel about Paul Shaw. So when Ian Cowper Ross, the author of the novel, is talking about "his dad", he is talking about a man with the surname of Shaw, since the character in the book is Paul Shaw. But what Ian Cowper Ross first began to do on that BBC-TV program in 1991, is to repeat his claim that "Mr Shaw" in the novel, is actually the father of Ian Cowper Ross. We know that the true name of Ian Cowper Ross' father is Charles Edward Ross.
IAN COWPER ROSS: In 1963 he was 63. He was born in 1900 so (at that time) he's 63 years old, still operating in the city with his chums, you know, who used to have lunch and do deals. This was the old city - before all the Mrs Thatchers and the red braces. These were people who wore bowler hats - not my dad but most of them, had an umbrella, got the 9.01, had lunch at the Savoy, shook hands on some tremendous god-knows-what sort of insider dealing (laughs) and all made a f*ck of a lot of money doing it.
6/11/2021 - We have now thoroughly investigated the life of Charles Edward Ross, and while there is undoubtedly more information to be found, we can conclusively stated that everything that the anorak community has claimed about this man is totally fictitious! Charles Edward Ross was born in New Zealand and the record of his parents lives are on record and have been on record for the world to read for a long time.
Charles Edward Ross married his first wife in New Zealand and both came to England where Charles Edward Ross divorced his first wife who is the mother of Ian Cowper Ross' step-brother who is also named Charles and given the middle name of Cowper. Charles Edward Ross married a second time and his new wife became the mother of Ian Cowper Ross. At the time the family was living in Chelsea just off King's Road.
We have traced Charles Edward to several places where he lived, all in England. However, for a job, he became involved with a laundry business that had just been taken over by a new owner who branched out into dry-cleaning. This business was located in Scotland. Charles Edward Ross became a director of this fledgling dry-cleaners, and with the help of Close Brothers merchant bankers, the business began to offer franchise opportunities. This business was opening up a new kind of venture in the United Kingdom, and soon that business was buying equipment from the largest manufacturer of dry-cleaning equipment in the U.K.
However, like the Jensen Car Company which was in financial trouble, the dry-cleaning manufacturer - but not the franchise business of which Charles Edward Ross was a director, was under the financial umbrella of the parent John Sheffield holding company called Norcros. Sheffield started subsidiaries called Southcros and Scotcross, which were also holding companies. Jocelyn Stevens became an investor and director of Southcros at least as early as 1960, but there was no connection between Charles Edward Ross, John Sheffield and Jocelyn Stevens.
Although Ian Cowper Ross told a court of law in 1961 that was hearing a case against him for crashing an expensive Jensen Car headlong into a bus, and having previously crashed an expensive motorcycle in a shop window, that his father was a "director of a sports car company" and that his home address was at Hindhead with his parents, there is nothing on record that we have found that indicates any financial business relationship to any sports car company by Charles Edward Ross. It is by inference only where Ian Cowper Ross did crash a Jensen car into a bus, while the court was also told that his father was director of a sports car company, that a jump to a conclusion is made that Charles Edward Ross was a director of Jensen Cars. However, we have been in constant contact with the Jensen Museum and those investigating in great detail the history of that company, and to date no such directorship has appeared on the record.
IAN COWPER ROSS: He was a New Zealander and he had an ambivalent attitude towards the English posher classes, very ambivalent about it. He used to have to deal with them every day but yet he wasn't one of them. He was an outsider, a complete outsider, and there was something about Ronan that he immediately really liked. I mean he just loved the guy. He went overboard for Ronan. I think they had some common bond in being anti-establishment at heart.
4/8/2021 - We can confirm that Charles Edward Ross was born in New Zealand.
IAN COWPER ROSS: My dad, at heart, was anti-establishment but his friends who he rang up that evening were Jocelyn Stevens and his father-in-law John Sheffield who were very much the establishment - absolute figures of the establishment, solid characters - well, I um, I wouldn't call Jocelyn solid actually, he was completely crazy but, nevertheless, not a rebel really, you wouldn't have thought - not of Ronan's Post Office 1916 variety anyway.
6/11/2022 - It would appear that Ian Cowper Ross' father threw him out of his house after his Jensen car crash which resulted in hospitalization and then in a court date. It would also appear from what we have been able to uncover that Ian Cowper Ross was given the job as a junior in the advertising department of Stevens Press Limited, owned by Jocelyn Stevens. In other words, Ian Cowper Ross wrote a novel in 1990 and invented a family and a scenario. There is no connection between that fictitious story and reality. However, Ian Cowper Ross has deliberately crossed-the-line by turning his 1990 make-believe into the 1991 BBC-TV which claims to be true, and then, by enticing Ray Clark to further embellish this fiction as a result of his 2013 interview with Ian Cowper Ross, what was fantasy became a lie when it was palmed-off as a recital of the truth.
IAN COWPER ROSS: So this unlikely group of people came together on my dad's say-so and everyone put in a bit of money - a punt it would have been for them. They were all rich, let's just say, to put it crudely, but they were all entrepreneurs. They all thought it might be great. Ronan said it will make millions a month. It sounded great. He sat there and he gave the spiel to old Jimmy - he started calling my father Jimmy. I couldn't believe he would call my dad Jimmy. You know, the whole idea was unbelievable. You know (Irish accent) “ah Jayzus Jimmy, you won't believe it when you see this one coming”. Jimmy goes overboard for Ronan and, as I say, the whole thing was done in a day.
6/11/2022 - In summation, everything Ian Cowper Ross told Ray Clark regarding this supposed event, is nothing but a lie. It never happened.
IAN COWPER ROSS: (My wife) Bunty sees him (Ronan) from time to time and he always says “oh anyone could have done it” (put up the money), you know. I think it's not unfair to say that he didn't much like my book. He doesn't like anyone taking credit “f*cking with the lady”, all this kind of thing, but actually I'm not quite sure whether anyone else could have done it, or would have done it. And history doesn't work that way. I mean Napoleon won the Battle of Austerlitz. Somebody else may have been able to win it but he won it. He was the one that did it. And we were the ones that backed Ronan, who had faith in him, who really asked no questions.
4/8/2021 - His refence to his wife called Bunty, is his nodding reference to the amazing dual aristocratic families that Ian Cowper Ross married into during 1966, and for that to happen, Ian Cowper Ross had to have met and got to know his wife before that date. This is the reason for his nonsensical alternative explanations about the creation of 'Radio Caroline' in 1964. They cover-up the real life activities of Ian Cowper Ross prior to the date of his aristocratic marriage.
IAN COWPER ROSS: The whole lot, the money, was finally delivered in cash. I remember the day we got the cash. I don't remember how we got it - we may have gone to the bank or whatever - but we ended up with a suitcase with £150,000 - which in those days was a fortune, a huge amount of money - and I know it affected us all in the same way, me Chris and Ronan. There was a sort of baptismal moment when we went to my flat - well Chris and my flat - I know that's in the book too - we just destroyed the place. We threw the money in the air, we smashed every ornament, we danced round the room with Mrs Monday the landlady, you know, and we went crazy. F*cking crazy.
4/8/2021 - In 2015, Ian Cowper Ross was basically telling Ray Clark that the novel called 'Rocking the Boat ' was really the true biographical account about the life of Ian Cowper Ross! That is a blatant lie.
IAN COWPER ROSS: From then on the thing went remarkably according to plan. Ronan went to Galveston. He dressed himself up in a sort of cowboy suit and went to Galveston. Chris went to Rotterdam. Chris had worked on... I think he was a sort of a gigolo or something on a cruise ship! He was a very good-looking guy. Supposedly a steward or in the purser's office but in fact I am sure a seducer of women (laughs) and he was deemed to be our man who knows about ships. On this very slim evidence, he went off with £20,000 - I think I'm right in saying - in cash to Rotterdam and buys this really great ship, the Caroline. If you look at the pictures of it, it was beautiful. I was a ship-fancier, my dad too, we loved ships and boats, and this was a beauty. That was great.
4/8/2021 - This section is absolute rubbish!
We discovered that Ronan O'Rahilly had gone to Houston., Texas in June 1963, but O'Rahilly never admitted this to anyone. We know where he stayed and who he saw and why he went there. We know all of this first-hand because a member of our investigative trio was there and the people who owned and managed the ship mv Mi Amigo in Galveston, Texas, which had been off Stockholm, Sweden, told us the details of his visit. More than this, we are still (2021) in contact with them, and they have recently sent us original documentation that has not been seen by anyone else. It throws an entirely new light on the venture known as 'Radio Nord'. Ronan O'Rahilly was a gopher ("go for this, go for that") and the blarney-mouthing smokescreen for the real creators of 'Radio Caroline' in 1964. There was a reason why the ship that was eventually renamed Mi Amigo was selected to became the home of 'Radio Nord' - even though a different ship had been selected for that purpose by others who were not in the know about the true reason why that project came to be. We know that reason why the switch was made, and although that is something that has never been reported so far, by anyone: it will be eventually exposed by us.
IAN COWPER ROSS: We were all very happy and I remember when Chris got back there was one very funny incident. We were in Ronan's flpeat. He'd bought the ship, Chris had, and we were sitting in his flat with these little girlfriends, Maria - Maria Jose - I still know Maria, funnily enough. She was a great girl - and there was another girl. She was Georgie Fame's girlfriend and Maria's friend. Anyway we were all stoned out of our f*cking minds, sitting round, laughing and giggling, and we'd got this ship! We couldn't believe it. And the phone rings. It is John Sheffield who was the most serious, conservative, important guy you could ever hope to meet and he starts asking Ronan what's going on. He said “we've bought a ship, John. It's a beautiful thing” and John asks him what kind of ship. So Ronan - he was always doing this too - puts his hand over the receiver and (whispers) “he wants to know what kind of f*cking ship it is” and Chris says “I don't know. It might have been a ferry boat” so he goes “John, Chris tells me that it was some sort of ferry boat. If you think about it, in Holland there's a lot of inland waterways” (laughs) and he puts down the phone. It is one of those things when you laugh so hard you never forget it for the rest of your life. We were crying with laughter and it gave birth to this wonderful word ‘inland’. And Ronan, probably to this day, may still use the word ‘inland’. It became a verb as well. You can ‘inland’ somebody so, if you're bullsh*tting them... Ronan would... you'd be sitting there, he'd go like that, he'd go ‘inland’ and you'd be ‘inland’ - which was what he was very, very good at. ‘Inlanding’ was probably Ronan's greatest talent. It was from that conversation when John wanted to know what kind of ship we'd bought. If you think about it, it was the most ridiculous answer he could have possibly given for a ship that was supposed to sit in the bloody North Sea!
4/8/2021 - This section is just stupid. There is a well documented history of the ship Fredericia which was purchased and managed by Wijsmuller - before it ended up at Greenore, Ireland.
RAY CLARK: So Chris had just gone off to Rotterdam on the off-chance of finding a ship?
he
IAN COWPER ROSS: I don't know. I can't remember. We had these people - or Ronan did - these Dutch guys had probably lined it up. He'd just gone to give it the nod I think. He may have searched high and low and found the thing. I don't know. It was fifty years ago. We had these people who in the book I call Vig Moller but they weren't called Vig Moller. I don't know. Can't remember what they were called.
4/8/2021 - Another example of Ian Cowper Ross lifting a fictitious character out of his novel, and then trying to reinterpret that character as a real person working for a real company. But he ran into trouble trying to link that fiction with a real company name, so Ray Clark helped him out!
RAY CLARK: Wijsmuller.
IAN COWPER ROSS: Wijsmuller. There you are.
4/8/2021 - Why on earth Ray Clark swallowed this nonsense wholesale without telling Ian Cowper Ross that he was fed up being played for a fool, we don't know. But it allowed Ian Cowper Ross to continue with his nonsensical story turning fiction into fact.
IAN COWPER ROSS: The Dutch. The whole thing was run by the Dutch, you know, the sea crew, the skipper, all that stuff was done by them and they were the ones who towed it away in 1968 because they hadn't been paid, that kind of thing, with Johnnie Walker still broadcasting.
4/8/2021 - Ian Cowper Ross then added an anecdote about Johnnie Walker and revealed how little he actually knew about events in 1968 relating to the 'Mi Amigo, because Ian Cowper Ross had no direct knowledge of them. Then Ian Cowper Ross switched back to talking about the mv Fredericia:
IAN COWPER ROSS: So probably they'd found the bloody thing - I don't know - but one way or another Chris went, got it, paid for it, brought it... It had to go to... er, am I allowed to talk about this?
RAY CLARK: I think so, yes. You're fine. I don't think you'll get arrested for it now!
4/8/2021 - Ray Clark rode to the rescue at this point, because Ian Cowper Ross had began to tangle his mythology surrounding Christopher Moore, around factually documented events involving Wijsmuller, which collided with the make-believe nonsense spun by Ian Cowper Ross. Yet, Ray Clark was buying into all of this for his interview with Ian Cowper Ross!
[THIS INTERVIEW AND COMMENTARY NOW CONTINUES HERE IN OUR OWN PART TWO OF THE ORIGINAL RAY CLARK INTERVIEW.]
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