Radio In Limerick

In the beginning there was no real desire for any involvement in radio, legal or otherwise. A brief 15 minute ‘spot’ courtesy of the all omnipotent RTE in O’Connell St. had previously proved very unsatisfactory. Whilst the choice of music was left up to the 5 or so presenters on ‘trial’ for future broadcasts, within the corporation, the engineers were very derogatory over choice and quality of the 45’s, even discarding one of my choices as being totally substandard (Bobby Fuller Four – I Fought The Law). strange that. Furthermore, attempts by Pat McKenna (Stardiscs Record Shop,Patrick Street),to advertise on RTE radio using my voiceover on his advert for his new record shop, was thrown out in favour of Larry Gogan’s version. My Voice was deemed totally unacceptable for broadcasting! Having left Poldarks Night Club earlier that year,( February 1978),The shop in Ellen St. was taking up more of my time in Record sales and Mobile Disco Units for construction and resale, and a DJ from cork I was dealing with asked me if there were any places he could set up his proposed Radio Station for Limerick, having already started broadcasting in Cork. I asked my landlord Hal Lewis about the vacant hair studio basement next door at 12 Ellen St. and access to the roof which was agreed all in at 15 punts a week. The weeks rolled on and whilst no more contact was   heard from Cork a friend of a social group that used to hang out in Quinn’s Pub, put it to me that a friend of theirs currently working in advertising for a Dublin ‘Pirate’ was hoping to prove the curse of St. Munchins to be wrong and wanted to know if I was interested in starting a radio station in Limerick.  My initial response was negative but was persuaded to agree to a meeting on his next trip home to Limerick. To my surprise the nephew of Richard Harris, Hayman, met up with me a couple of weeks later, and having paid for the ‘Cork enterprise’ for the last 5 weeks with no response, I agreed to go ahead with a radio station to be called Big L in tribute to Radio London a pirate operation broadcasting from the North sea in the 60’s. Hayman was to take care of all the advertising, whilst I supplied the broadcasting equipment, including records, record players and studio furniture and anything else required to get the show on the road for which Hayman was to receive 50% of the net profit without any claim to the records or equipment. All agreed we started broadcasting in June 1978.