Reporter's Diary

Press, 4 August 1977, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Radio Caroline

WHAT is the betting that Radio Avon will call its Timaru station Radio Caroline if it gets a licence for South Canterbury? As well as being the name of Timaru’s bay, Caroline has a long—if, some say, dishonourable — association with broadcasting. This week is the tenth anniversary of the founding of the illegal pirate station Radio Caroline, which broadcasts to millions of British listeners from a ship moored 12 miles off Frinton-on-Sea. Stem laws forbid Britons giving any comfort to the pirate station, but that does not seem to have affected Radio Caroline. In January a man was fined £l5O for taking letters and newspapers to the ship’s crew. It is against the law to listen to the pirate station, although the Home Office has yet to prosecute any of the large and lucrative audience, which can tune in to its broadcasts 24 hours a day. Radio Caroline is being illegally supplied with record albums and advertisements, and of course the record companies and advertisers all claim to have no idea how the station gets them. There have been 14 prosecutions for selling Radio Caroline T-shirts, but otherwise the authorities seem to accept the offshore station as a fact of broadcasting life. Ho hum

ONE of many young people attending this week’s Ashburton Borough Council meeting was unimpressed with proceedings. A pupil at Ashburton Intermediate was one of nearly 100 who taxed accommodation in the council chambers. She was sitting in front of the

press bench, and was asked whether she understood what was going on. “It is boring, isn’t it?” she replied, then as an afterthough: “Just like church." Antarctic traffic JUST for the record, the Aviation Historical Society’s newsletter publishes what it cautiously calls “almost the last word” on civil airline flights to the Antarctic since the end of World War 11. The first was on October 15, 1957, when a Pan American Boeing 377 Stratocruiser flew to McMurdo from Christchurch, landed, and flew back. Modem Air flew one of its Convairs from Christchurch to McMurdo on November 22, 1968, and after landing, took it right on to Argentina. On July 5, 1973, a United Airlines DCB flew from Sydney to Auckland via the Antarctic — an overflight that is often forgotten, according to the newsletter. Then came last summer’s five tourist overflights by Qantas and Air New Zealand. Alarm call BRITISH AIRWAYS’ newsletter reports that the airline’s Wellington sales office had its busiest latenight opening yet on the night of the Hannahs Building fire last month. Noone could get near the office because of a police cordon, but the staff stayed on dealing with telex and telephone bookings. The manager’s most urgent task was to send a signal to the area office cancelling a memo sent the previous day recommending the transfer of the office bank account to a closer branch

of the Bank of New Zealand “for additional security.” The branch in question was on fire.

Price of beer

ANOTHER tax on liquor is forecast by the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council. The council, led by Sir Leonard Thornton, the former Chief of Defence Staff, is concerned with all aspects of alcohol use and abuse, and will be concentrating on research, education and treatment. From 1978, says its newsletter, its source of finance will be a “liquor levy,” on the manufacture or importation of beer, spirits and fortified and unfortified wine. It does not say whether the levy will be passed on to the consumer in the form of another price rise, but history favours that possibility. “The amount of levy each year will be fractional in terms of the cost of a glass of beer,” says the council, “but will be set at a level sufficient to meet a budget to be drawn up by the council and approved by the Government.” Jack of all trades WHAT sort of qualities are required in an Official Assignee? Mr I. H. Hansen, the man who holds the job in Christchurch, outlined them to- the Christchurch Rotary Club this week: He needs to be a barrister and solicitor, a detective, an accountant, a salesman (“we get all sorts of odd things to sell”), a valuer, a real estate agent, a management advisor, and a marriage guidance councellor. Mr Hansen is a qualified real estate agent, and at one time lectured on credit management. “GroreF’

The battle of the London gossip columnists still

rages, undimmed even by the cheerful sound of wedding bells. Nigel Dempster, writer of the spiciest gossip column in Fleet Street (in the “Daily Mail”), attracted the attention of all his rivals when his own marriage took place in Chelsea on Saturday. They had a field day. The “Sunday Times” wrote its whole report of Dempster’s marriage to “elfin-like” Lady Camilla Dorothy Godolphin Harris in Dempster’s own peculiar style. "Dempster,” it reported, “a tanned but balding 35, was previously married to European aristocrat Emma de Bendem, and began his career as friend/enemy of the famous with a job as doorman at New York’s El Morocco niterie, which is where, according to a former colleague, ‘he learned his grovelling manner towards rich nobs.’” Mr Dempster also writes a gossip column for “Private Eye,” under the pseudonym “Grovel.” Ingratitude

IT WAS a quiet afternoon for the port of Lyttelton. Hardly anything could be heard except the lapping of water against the painted hulls of foreign ships and the rusty hulls of New Zealand ones. Then from the gangway of one ship came the unmistakable sounds of a domestic dispute. A pregnant woman was loudly proclaiming the likelihood that she would have the baby there and then, halfway up the gangplank — or down, as the case might be. Her husband (as he was identified by a bystander) was trying to soothe her, but he must have wished he had saved himself the bother, because she rounded on him and squawked “You can — off! It’s not your baby anyway!”

— Arthur