Meet Jimmy Shaw ....

Yesterday we told you about our road to discovery, and we also answered Chris Edwards of 'Offshore Echos' and his false and contradictory claim to having helped to identify the father of Ian Ross. Anoraks claim that Ian Ross' father was the primary source of funding in 1964 for 'Radio Caroline', and they base their claim on a convoluted 'history' that makes no sense whatsoever and is 100% fiction!

Here's why:

It is primarily based upon a 1965 brief newspaper item which claims that the primary investor behind 'Radio Caroline' in 1964, was a man named 'Jimmy Ross'. As you will note, this news item was published after the fact in 1965, because 'Radio Caroline' first appeared on the airwaves in 1964, and when it did so, it was cast upon a sea of mysteries and questions.

​The first question being: "Who is behind this 'pirate radio' station?"

A London-based public relations agency answered that is was a young Irishman named Ronan O'Rahilly. Then 'Radio Atlanta' came on the air, and another public relations agency with its headquarters in Australia began to promote the name of Australian music publisher and record producer Allan Crawford. Many news items followed on with rumors of a 'merger' and even suggestion that Ronan O'Rahilly had taken Allan Crawford's ideas to create his own station.

But all of this caused more questions about Ronan O'Rahilly.

Lawyers for Allan Crawford had registered a company called 'Project Atlanta Limited' in London during the closing hours of July 1963, but there was no mention of any company behind 'Radio Caroline'. So where did the money come from?

The first person to own up to being an investor was publisher Jocelyn Stevens. We explained with illustrations the story behind that event on February 15, 2021, although we have since learned a lot more since then. 'Radio Caroline' came on the air during March 28, 1964, but the press announcement by Jocelyn Stevens did not appear until April 10, 1964, approximately thirteen days later.

The news report claimed that a company called 'Planet Productions Limited' had been registered in Ireland "two weeks ago" and that Jocelyn Stevens and Ronan O'Rahilly were "joint managing directors" of 'Planet Sales', a "wholly owned subsidiary" of 'Planet Productions Limited', and that 'Planet Sales' operated from the offices of 'Queen' magazine in London. However, when the UK Board of Trade investigated the ownership of 'Radio Caroline', it drew a blank. No operating company had been registered under any name as either a British company or a 'foreign' company legally registered to do business in the United Kingdom.

Now we jump ahead to 1965 when there were many reports that 'Radio Atlanta' had "merged" with 'Radio Caroline' for sales purposes, but not for purposes of ownership. It was during that time period that the name of "Jimmy Ross" first appeared as the primary financial investor in 'Radio Caroline'. But again, no mention was made of any operating company that existed prior to 'Planet Productions Limited'.

So who was this "Jimmy Ross"?

For the answer to that question you have to know about Ian Cowper Ross, because he is the person who began to create this phantom.

Ian Cowper Ross was a disaster to his real father, a dry-cleaning sales promoter named Charles Edward Ross. His father had succeeded in taking a small dry-cleaning shop and turning it into a franchise with outlets in Scotland and England. He was so successful that its owner of that business moved to England in order to improve the social standing of his family. Charles Edward Ross also moved around and upgraded his own lifestyle as a result.

His son, Ian, was a disaster.

Ian Cowper Ross went to the same public school as his step-brother, also named Charles like his father, but unlike step-brother Charles who went on to create several business on Kings Road in Chelsea, Ian dropped out of school. Ian then managed to crash a vintage motorcycle and then an expensive Jensen car head-on into a bus. That landed Ian in court and it almost cost him a foot, and surgery on it gave Ian the nickname of 'Flipper'.

Ian's next move from being just a reckless youth, was to be given a job as a junior employee with a company that was renamed Stevens Press Limited. It owned several publications, including 'Queen' magazine. The boss was Jocelyn Stevens, and he created a 'front' for 'Radio Caroline' using a convenience address on Regent Street in London. Ian was given a token job as assistant to a sales representative working on commission.

It was either Jocelyn Stevens or Ian himself who invented the name of "Jimmy Ross". Jocelyn Stevens had to produce a name other that his own, and he did not want to create a situation where Ian Cowper Ross would replace the professional public relations agency and begin talking to the press. But by implying that a 'Ross Senior' was behind 'Radio Caroline' he gained credibility since 'Ross Junior' (Ian), was working for Jocelyn Stevens. In that way the idea that another person named 'Ross' had secured a job for his young and reckless Ian, would not prompt more questions from the press. So no one bothered to ask who this "other" Ross was,, and therefore no one had to come up with an explanation.

However, many years later, a number of anoraks began to write books and so they initiated questions about the identity of "Jimmy Ross". Their interest was sparked by the re-emergence of Ian Cowper Ross in 1990 when he wrote a novel that was financed and  published with the help of his wealthy and aristocratic mother-in-law.

There was just one big problem.

The book was a novel that some suggested was a thinly disguised autobiography about Ian, and Ian's creation of 'Radio Caroline' with the help of his father.

Problem: Ian's father is named Charles Edward Ross and his nickname would have been "Charlie", not "Jimmy".

Another problem: In his novel, Ian's main character was not named Ian Cowper Ross, in fact the fictitious character did not have the surname of "Ross", he was called "Shaw". In his fictitious work, Ian gave his fictitious character's father the first name of "Jimmy"!

Ian Ross' novel was published in 1990, and one year later, a cobbled-together 'documentary' was aired on BBC-TV in which cameos of Ronan O'Rahilly, Jocelyn Stevens and Ian Cowper Ross all appeared, but not in the same room at the same time. In the video it appears as though Ian is licking his fingers and giggling while demonstrating other mannerisms of a person who could be imbibing cocaine, or something similar.

What Ian does in the video is to imply that the story in his novel is true. In fact, he goes so far as to assert that certain sections are true.

What Ian does not do is mention the name of his father.

Ian only refers to his father as "Daddy".

He certainly does not say that his father went by the name of "Jimmy".

However, when this novel of 1990 began to revive interest in the anorak cult community, Ian Cowper Ross began to 'cash-in' on his newly acquired fame. He began by giving interviews to anoraks, and the more interviews he gave, the closer he got to linking his "Daddy" with the made-up name of "Jimmy".

But "Jimmy" never belonged to Charles Edward Ross, in Ian's 1990 novel it belonged to "Jimmy Shaw".

Anoraks went wild and posted on Wikipedia that Jimmy Ross founded MacFisheries and CarPhone Warehouse as well as 'Radio Caroline'. This was not the work of Ian Cowper Ross, it was the work of immature anorak cultists who love to make-up conspiratorial stories which lack any foundation in fact.

When it came to the name of 'Caroline' they disputed what Ronan O'Rahilly said about 6 years-old Caroline Kennedy, and switched for a time to one-time would-be model and actress, Caroline Maudling. The anoraks did not, and never have had a clue as to the origin of that name when applied to an offshore radio station. They are just a dying cult of ludicrous individuals who feed each other with silly stories. But then there are some like engine mechanic Malcolm Smith who use this quasi-religious bunch to render their labor and money to support his own ventures that he has also branded 'Radio Caroline'.

So if the entire 'Jimmy Ross' story is a phantom spread by people like Chris Edwards who we know for a fact knows better, and who agrees with Malcolm Smith that Ronan O'Rahilly was a flake who cadged everything and was never in a situation to finance anything, then who was behind the 1963 creation of 'Radio Caroline'? It was Jocelyn Stevens who put the start date of 'Radio Caroline' as a project, somewhere around September-October of 1963, and that does indeed fit-in with supporting documentation as being the true time period.

This is why we can be so dogmatic in dismissing the anorak community as being either gullible fools or participatory con-men on a small scale. The fact that they don't like it, or that they hate (loath) Mervyn Hagger who few have actually met, is just silly behavior on the part of either immature individuals, or individuals like Chris Edwards, Paul Rusling and Malcom Smith who are using the anorak base as a means to further their own financial interests.

To see our earlier page about "Jimmy Ross" click below:

To see our earlier video about Ian Cowper Ross and the "Jimmy" myth, please click the image above.

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