Ray Clark's big problem ....

It's not just Ronan O'Rahilly who lied, but Stephen Christopher Moore, Ian Cowper Ross and a whole lot of other self-styled radio-anoraks as well. They have all been helped by the ridiculous, if not disgusting work, of Ray Clark.

Well, what else would you call his 2014 book that he reissued in 2019? It is a fake account about the start of 'Radio Caroline' in 1964, and Ray Clark peddled his rubbish to the gullible idiots in the anorak community, and not one of them has had the guts to step forward and call out Ray Clark as one of the main people to put a gloss on the rubbish spewed by Ian Cowper Ross.

We tried to fathom Ian Cowper Ross' 1990 novel and in the end gave up because it does not make sense. But in 1991, BBC-TV allowed Ian Cowper Ross to come on the British taxpayer airwaves and hint that his novel is actually a thinly disguised autobiography about the life of Ian Cowper Ross.

Then, in a written interview conducted by Ray Clark, this is what Ian Cowper Ross claimed about that book, his life and the start of 'Radio Caroline':

"IAN 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. Really there were three of us who started it."

Ian Cowper Ross knew that his statement is a lie at the instant he spit out his words. But Ian Cowper Ross goes further and claims that:

"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."

Yes, the Kenya has gone, but it had gone before Ian Cowper Ross claimed that this meeting took place. It had become the Kenco coffee bar. We have published proof of his lies many times before.

Ian Cowper Ross continued:

".... 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)."

Yes, Ian Cowper Ross was born next door to the King's Road in Chelsea - we have tracked the moments of his father Charles Edward Ross since he arrived in the United Kingdom. His father's first move in London was to divorce his New Zealand born wife, the mother of Ian's step-brother who opened several businesses on the King's Road - with a partner. Ian was not in business with his step-brother and his step brother's car wash business was on the King's Road!

By the time his father moved to Hindhead near Haslemere, he had to thrown Ian out of the house that he occupied with his second wife who is Ian's birth mother. His "daddy", as Ian refers to his father, got tired of Ian' antics.

Ian had a court record following his head-on collision in a Jensen sports car which he rammed into a bus. Before that he had smashed up an expensive motorcycle. Ian ended up in hospital and almost lost a foot, and then he appeared in court. Ian was a useless kid who cost his father money, so his dad threw him out of his house when Ian was 19 years of age! That is how he ended up with Stephen Christopher Moore.

Ian lies a lot!

But if Ray Clark knows that Ian is lying, what does it say about Ray Clark? He published his first load of rubbish in 2014 and then he reissued it in 2019, without denouncing his first attempt as a work of deceit produced to solicit money from the public.

Ian Cowper Ross admits that what he is telling Ray Clark is coming from his novel, while admitting that he is a reckless idiot endangering life ....

"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 was the perfect mark .... 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)"

Ian Cowper Ross tries to use his really stupid performance on the road as a laughable excuse: "In those days you could drive around, there was no parking trouble." 

He claims that Ronan O'Rahilly was given permission to drive Ian Cowper Ross' MGB "at about 180 miles an hour all the way to Haslemere with me sitting in the back and Chris in the front ...."

Then Ian Cowper Ross said to Ray Clark: "And that's how it started. We got there. I know that's in the book too but it is completely true. That part of the book is true."

But there is a problem with that lie: Ian had been thrown of the house by his "daddy" who he describes thus: "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. .... 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 ...."

The age of his father Charles Edward Ross is true, and so is his country of birth. But what he did for a living was a shaded version of the truth.

Charles Edward Ross was a salesman selling dry-cleaning company franchises. The parent business originated in Scotland, and Charles Edward Ross was on its board of directors. It was originally just a local laundry which expanded into dry-cleaning.

John Sheffield's Norcros holding company was an umbrella financing operation for several businesses that kept their original management but whose shares were co-mingled to raise money in the name of Norcros that the individual businesses could not do. The dry-cleaners that Charles Edward Ross worked for was not a part of Norcros.

However, Norcros did have a company in its financial portfolio that manufactured dry-cleaning equipment and as seller and buyer that is the kind of contact that Charles Edward Ross had with this Norcros group member company.

Jocelyn Stevens' own publishing company was not a part of Norcros, but Jocelyn Stevens was both a director and investor since 1960 of a Norcros subsidiary holding company called Southcros. Stevens and Sheffied came to know each other as co-directors and Stevens eventually married Sheffield's daughter.

These three, Charles Edward Ross; John Sheffield and Jocelyn Stevens were all successful business entrepreneurs. Ian Cowper Ross had been thrown out of his father's house because he was a reckless kid who squandered money. Even Ian's step-brother was a successful business person, but on a much smaller scale than his father. Ian was just a waste of space.

That simply put raises the question of not only why, but how could Ian claim to have driven down to see his father with Ronan O'Rahilly who was a totally unsuccessful gadfly sponging money from others, and Stephen Christopher Moore who at best was a nightclub disc jockey? Why would Ian's father even talk to him about investing money when not one of the three had any knowledge whatsoever of the business they were supposedly trying to raise money for?

It just didn't happen.

When the nonsense "Jimmy" story is spread on top of the ridiculous tale, it becomes an insulting and ludicrous tale only to be told by fools to fools. No one else would believe it! Ian's father was not about to listen to a stupid business proposition and then instantaneously hand over a suitcase full of money!

That did not happen.

Ian Cowper Ross lied and Ray Clark put the lies into print, more than once, and then he published those lies in his interview:

"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. ....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 ...."

This is a really stupid story and Ian Cowper Ross insists that you believe that he is telling the truth, which of course, he is not. Neither is Ray Clark!

".... 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 .... the landlady, you know, and we went crazy."

Then Ian Cowper Ross claimed that: "Ronan went to Galveston. He dressed himself up in a sort of cowboy suit and went to Galveston."

The fact is that we were told where Ronan O'Rahilly went and what he did by the people who met him and put him up at the Continental Hotel in Houston, Texas. They took him out to buy a pair of cowboy boots, which in those days was part of a footwear attire that was quite common in Texas during the Sixties. Ronan O'Rahilly went to see our now departed friend Bill Weaver who had custody of the mv Mi Amigo. O'Rahilly had been sent there in June 1963 by Allan Crawford to try and lease it. But Weaver had already stripped the vessel and he would only sell it to O'Rahilly's boss, Allan Crawford. However, at the time, Crawford did not have access to that kind of money and so O'Rahilly returned to London empty-handed.

 Then Ray Clark asked Ian Cowper Ross: "So Chris had just gone off to Rotterdam on the off-chance of finding a ship?"

Ian Cowper Ross replied: "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."

Again, its back to that 1990 novel written by Ian Cowper Ross. He can answer some questions, but for other questions where he does not want to provide an impromptu answer and find himself caught in his own contradictions, he suddenly has a lapse of memory.

Again and again we throw down the challenge to the entire anorak community and its loud-mouthed leaders: We claim that you have, and that you still are lying in order to solicit money from fools who believe you, and you expect them to hand-over their cash to you.

Not once have you tried to refute any of the facts.

Your own response it to attack the messengers over and over again.

So here is another chance for you to set the record straight:

Prove that what Ray Clark has published is the truth.

We say that you can't because everything that has been printed by Ray Clark to promote the tales of Ian Cowper Ross is a lie!