Radio Kaleidoscope

One of the highlights of 1970 was the Isle of Wight Pop festival, attended by a number of the Radio Kaleidoscope crew. On discovering that they were from Kaleidoscope, the organisers of the festival granted the team a free pass , allowing them and their Land Rover to drive into the backstage area!

For a variety of reasons, transmissions by the original Kaleidoscope team grew gradually less and less frequent over the following years and others began to take over the running of the station's operations. It continued successfully until it ceased transmission in 1976, its nine years making it one of the longest-running land-based pirate radio stations of the period.

There is still a large amount of material in existence from the original Radio Kaleidoscope (1967-1973) - reel-to-reel tapes of shows and adverts, the station's original master jingle set, plus all the press cuttings and fan mail to the DJs about their shows. There are also some early photos, and recordings of pub interviews with Ian Dury and Alan Freeman, the former of which features the line “I know Radio Caroline but who the f*** is Kaleidoscope?”! All of this has now surfaced after 40 years and provides a fantastic snapshot of one of the most successful land-based pirate stations to have existed in the UK. In many ways, the early Radio Kaleidoscope set the trend for the clandestine radio scene for many years to come.

The team's activities did not end with Kaleidoscope - the Radio-K Roadshow, first started in 1968 by Steve and “H”, under the name of the 'Discophonic Discotheques' continued until the early 80s, notably entertaining guests at a street party for the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations on the Westwood estate in Hadleigh, and in 1984, the team also set up a 24-hour radio station broadcasting night club music and daily radio shows to British and Dutch holidaymakers in the Austrian Tyrol.