A question ....

If Radio Caroline did not begin with Jocelyn Stevens as depicted in the May 12, 1964 Granada-TV show 'World in Action', then where did it begin?

Jocelyn Stevens said on camera in that Granada-TV show that it began as a project about six months earlier, and that would mean around September-October 1963. But where did it begin, and who began it, and why?

Forget the nonsense about a lack of pop music, or a shortage of independent record labels. British TV with Radio Luxembourg promoted the Beatles to fame long before anyone mentioned the name Radio Caroline. The record charts also reflect this. Joe Meeks and others also proved that what Ronan O'Rahilly claimed could not be done, was already being done by several people who had independent record labels.

When Radio Caroline did come on the air, it sounded like the BBC kind of delivery. It was a mixture of ad hoc music. It was not American Top 40, and it was not even up to the standard of Radio Luxembourg commercial program delivery. It was a long form of BBC broadcasting that targeted "housewives" - not teenagers!

The proof is there for all to see, but latter-day writers - most of them coming to the press after 1991 - want you to believe lies, rather than documented contemporary facts!

Clearly, if the nonsense spun by Ian Cowper Ross is removed from the storyline, then there are several gaps in the Jocelyn Stevens version of the story. However, the Jocelyn Stevens version is not contradictory, which the Ian Cowper Ross version most certainly is.

The key dates to consider are these:

1. September-October 1963, starting date for Radio Caroline project given by Jocelyn Stevens;
2. January 1, 1964: purchase from DFDS and arrival of the mv Fredericia at Rotterdam, Holland;
3. February 14, 1964, date when the mv Fredericia left Rotterdam and eventually arrived at Greenore, Ireland;
4. February 26, 1964, date of registration by Planet Productions Limited in Ireland;
5. March 27, 1964, date of arrival by mv Fredericia off Essex and beginning of test transmissions;
6. May 1, 1964, expiration date on first Radio Caroline Rate Card showing a address on Regent Street in London;  
7. May 12, 1964, transmission date of 'World in Action', a Granada-TV show that was filmed inside the office of Jocelyn Stevens on Fetter Lane where Ian Cowper Ross; Ronan O'Rahilly and Christopher Moore were also present.

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​This timeline clearly shows that Planet Productions Limited was incidental to the actual storyline, since many events involving the expenditure of money had already taken place - before it was even formed.

Also key is the fact that the first Rate Card originated with a Regent Street address.

So who was providing the money for all of this, and how were they dispensing it?

Now according to Ian Cowper Ross, a man named "Jimmy Shaw" who was the father of "Paul Shaw" provided a man named Liam O'Mahoney with a suitcase of money via a bank, to purchase a ship called mv Anastassia, and all of this was published as fiction.

Not only that, but the fictitious characters named by Ian Cowper Ross in his 1990 novel, form the only basis for the story that Ian Cowper Ross spun as fact, just one year later. That was in 1991 on BBC-TV.

Later still in an interview with Ray Clark, he began to weave the tale of fiction that Ian Cowper Ross wrote in 1990, into an embellished tale account that went beyond what he claimed in 1991 on BBC-TV. It was as if he knew he had got away with a lie, and now he was trying to see just how stupid everyone was in believing what he had to say.  But, if Ian Cowper Ross is removed from the storyline, then Ronan O'Rahilly's version leaves the money part of it as a total blank.

No one acted like a professional journalist or interviewer by pinning down Ian Cowper Ross to specific information. It was all delivered with laughs by Ian Cowper Ross as if he was 'high' on something - or as if he thought that everyone taking note of what he was saying was so stupid to be beyond belief.

Now if we switch tracks to Ronan O'Rahilly, all he did was to recite another tale which was very loosely based upon fact, but which Ronan O'Rahilly had distorted by expanding it to the point that it became a total lie. However, O'Rahilly's nonsense story was a sort of precursor to the story spun by Ian Cowper Ross. They don't overlap, but they do compliment each other in order to form one big lie. To that framework of lies are added more lies.

Therefore, trying to pin down the money story based upon the idea that "Jimmy Shaw" is really Charles Edward Ross, the father of Ian Cowper Ross, and that Charles Edward Ross called Jocelyn Stevens on the phone and got him to become a major investor in Radio Caroline is ridiculous, especially since the first address used by Radio Caroline was on Regent Street, and not at Jocelyn Stevens' office on Fetter Lane.

Now this is not to say that Jocelyn Stevens did not become involved because he obviously did, and the May 12, 1964 Granada-TV 'World in Action' show clearly places Ian Cowper Ross, Jocelyn Stevens, Ronan O'Rahilly and Christopher Moore all in the same space and time inside the office of Stevens Press Ltd on Fetter Lane. But, May 12, 1964 is the last of 7 key dates (see list above), and clearly there are not only missing dates in that calendar of  events, but there is a lot of missing information as well.

Who was running the show, and why were they running it?

There is a connection to the formation of Project Atlanta Limited on August 1, 1963, and before that to a company known as CBC (Plays) Limited. In fact, it is CBC (Plays) Limited that holds the key to understanding what it was holding that made it central to this story. It was CBC (Plays) Limited that not only linked to a major British electrical manufacturer, but it also linked to a production company linked to both ITA contractors and Radio Luxembourg, and an association via Houston, Texas, with the offices of "Mister Big" - as Jocelyn Stevens called him, while denying on camera that he existed!

Oh, he existed and only the hoi polloi seem to be unaware of what this man was doing. The UK government knew, and the criminal underground knew, and many large international business executives knew.

This is the storyline we are unfolding and why we totally discarding the nonsense lines (lies) spun by Ronan O'Rahilly and Ian Cowper Ross - except where their lives genuinely intersect and interact with the real story.

In our continuing Blog we will reveal where this complicated trail leads to, and it does not lead where you might imagine that it leads to, and neither is the ultimate objective to establish an offshore radio station called 'Caroline'. That was only a means to an end, and in the end it became a headache that needed to be disposed of, and on that point everyone agreed!

Everyone that is, except die-hard anoraks who chose to believe in the lies of Ronan O'Rahilly!