Pimms ‘Wedding’ TV Commercial Now Online

I received an email from Caz Gurney in Watford, saying, “I have found ‘The Wedding’ Pimms TV commercial for you!”

Caz also asked if I had found the “Hookers” Pimms ad, but no, sadly I haven’t yet. Caz agrees, “It’s going to be next on my list of stuff to find.”

“The Wedding” ad was on website dedicated to the fans of Adam Ant, hence the strange intro screen, but the content is all there. Brilliant. You’ll need Real Player to run this one. You can view the commercial by clicking here. If you’d like to keep it, right click the link and choose ‘Save Target As…’ and select a place to save it on your hard drive. I ask again, why aren’t Pimms making more of these commercials? Crazy!



Anyhow, thanks Caz!

Offshore Music Radio

If you’re of an age to remember the first radio plays of tracks such as “Love Grows (Where my Rosemary Goes)”, “Cathy’s Clown”, “Take Good Care of my Baby” and so on, and better still, if you lived in the UK and heard them all from the pirate radio ships, I’ve just found a gem of a website you’ll love.

Offshore Music Radio aims ro recreate the best days of UK “Offshore” Radio.

Offshore? For you in other countries who have no idea what I’m talking about, back in the 60s the UK was stuck in a radio rut. The BBC provided four radio programmes and that was that! Good as they were, they never catered properly to the “Baby Boomers” – children of the 40s and 50s who were reaching their teens at this time. Entrepreneurs has been to the States and heard what radio could be like, and set up pirate radio ships. They anchored just outside British territorial waters and started blasting the UK with a kind of radio we’d never heard before. For a start, there were commercials!

The Website and station Offshore Music Radio is the brainchild of two people, Lyn and Dave Laine, who were immersed in radio in those days. Today, shows recreatng that era come from a studio in their home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Programmes are either automated from a PC (Generally the overnight ones) although an army of “old time” DJs have been dragged kicking and screaming out of retirement to compile weekly shows which they send on minidisk or CD to Lyn and Dave for transmission. There are live shows as well; Dave does weekend breakfast live, and Lyn does a request show live on a Saturday evening. The whole thing runs 24/7 for broadcast to the Internet.

Broadcast history is in Lyn’s blood, her Father, Gordon Williams, produced a show for the “BBC Light Programme” called “Down Your Way” which ran for years and many UK people will remember. Offshore Music Radio is currently heard for an average of 5000 person-hours on a rolling 30 days and each listener tunes in for between 50 and 70 minutes a day. They have listeners right across the globe, even in China, Bolivia and Russia.

So – you’ll want the stream URL, won’t you! (A few shows are partially or wholly broadcast in Dutch, Holland being another target for the pirate ships.) Even if you never heard a pirate ship broadcast, if you’re anywhere close to being 50, you’ll still love the music! CLICK HERE to listen – and save it as a Favourite!