Radio 270

Radio 270 was a pirate radio station serving Yorkshire and the North East of England from 1966 to 1967. It broadcast from a converted Dutch lugger called Oceaan 7 positioned in international waters off Scarborough, North Yorkshire followed by a move to a more sheltered position off the coast of Bridlington.

In 1965 a group of Yorkshire businessmen formed a consortium to establish an offshore radio station to broadcast to the North East coast from a location off Scarborough. Don Robinson, aged 28, who was an entertainments promoter, began the venture with Bill Pashby (a fishing boat skipper), Roland Hill (a poultry farmer) and Leonard Dale (owner of the Dale Electrics business at Gristhorpe). These recruited Wilf Proudfoot, owner of a chain of supermarkets and a former Conservative MP. The venture was incorporated within a public company named Ellambar Investments Ltd.

In late 1965, Proudfoot addressed a public meeting at a Scarborough hotel in which he invited the public to subscribe for shares in the business. He indicated that the venture was a high risk one and that nobody should expect a commercial return on the money they put in. Around sixty people did subscribe with the largest single shareholding being held by Proudfoot himself. Leonard Dale became Chairman of the company while Proudfoot became its managing director.

Don Robinson and Bill Pashby both initially occupied prominent roles in what soon became known as Radio 270. Robinson prepared the first programme plan for the station which adopted a mixture of light music and lifestyle material. It was intended to provide an "up-market" offering which would compete directly with the BBC's Light Programme. Pashby was the station's first "Maritime Director" and it was he that picked out a suitable vessel for use as a broadcasting platform and supervised its fitting out.

However, the business side of the operation fell increasingly under the control of Wilf Proudfoot. The station's management was run from an office in the Scalby Road, Scarborough headquarters of the Proudfoot supermarket business. The station's office manager was Maggie Lucas, a long-standing associate of Proudfoot who had acted as his secretary when he had been the Member of Parliament for Cleveland from 1959 to 1964. Proudfoot became uncomfortable with the planned programming and he engaged the services of Noel Miller as Programme Director. Miller had previous experience of commercial radio in Australia and he adopted a simple style of programming based on a Top 40 format.

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