Reginald Calvert (1928 – 21 June 1966), was the professional name of Pearce Reginald Hartley Calvert was an English Artist manager, born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire.
He was the manager of The Fortunes, Pinkerton's Assorted Colours, Screaming Lord Sutch, and other pop groups. In 1964, after hearing Radio Caroline, he decided to start his own pirate radio station, and made use of an old old World War II fort in the Thames Estuary. Originally, the station was called Radio Sutch, and it stated broadcasting on 27 May 1966, on 1542kHz. They had a summer of fun, but when Sutch decided to return to performing, Reg Calvert carried on, renamed it Radio City, and put it onto a more professional footing.
Calvert was shot and killed by Oliver Smedley, the former owner of a rival offshore station, Radio Atlanta, who was later acquitted of murder on the grounds of self-defence.
Calvert established the pirate station Radio City, which broadcast from a Second World War marine fort off the Kent coast, seven miles from Margate. Radio Atlanta, the second pirate radio station, ran out of money and merged with Radio Caroline, which had also run out of money. It was decided that Calvert would be asked to amalgamate with them and they would pay the bills, giving Calvert 50% of the profit. After a couple of months, Radio Atlanta was again in financial difficulty and not paying bills or wages, so Calvert resumed control. Later in 1965, Major Oliver Smedley and Allan Crawford approached him again to go into partnership, on the proviso that they would provide a new transmitter. In December 1965, the transmitter arrived from Texas. It was old and very large, and the wrong sort of transmitter. The power pack fell in the sea as they tried to hoist it onto the station, and although it was dried out, the transmitter used too much power and was unsuitable. Neither Radio City nor Atlanta engineers could get it to work properly. Shortly afterwards, Atlanta sent Radio City a bill of £600 for the transport from Texas. Calvert returned it to Atlanta, on the grounds that the transmitter was its responsibility and could be collected at any time.