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Radio Kaleidoscope started life around 1970, in Southend-on-sea in Essex. The brainchild of Colin King who had been heavily involved in the famous Trafalgar Square free radio rally in August 1968. At the rally Colin met Maurice Ogden who was a offshore pirate fan, and radio engineer. Maurice built a transmitter and several broadcasts were made in Southend but Colin had much bigger plans. Late in 1972 he discovered that there was a group within Radio Jackie in London who were unhappy with the way Jackie was sounding at the time, and they wanted to broadcast a more professional sound. Colin wanted to start a polished professional sounding station and he arranged a meeting with the Jackie dissenters.

The meeting went well, and the group decided to broadcast to London every Sunday on 266m with the name Radio Kaleidoscope. The first transmission was on March 3rd 1973 with a tightly formatted fast paced top 40 sound. DJs included ex Jackie men Dave Owen and Pat Edison. Broadcasts continued every week.

Radio Kaleidoscope was probably the first tightly formatted music station on the British mainland. Commercial radio was still months away, and the operators only had experience of listening to the old 60s offshore pirates, so they decided to look to the US for programme inspiration. Although they had decided to opt for a top 40 format, the team were keen to be first with the new sounds and as a result they developed their own musical identity as many of the records they picked failed to become hits. The station had a distinctive poppy AOR sound.

Pat Edison records a programme in the Kaleidoscope studio

The studio had originally been built for Jackie's VHF service and was located in Pat Edison's bedroom. The programmes were very heavily compressed and recorded onto cassette tapes. These tapes were broadcast from the transmitter which was set up in a field with the aerial supported by trees.

Very quickly the Big K, as the station became known, established itself as the number 1 pirate in London. From time to time the Post Office would raid the station, but this was seen as an occupational hazard and the Big K always returned.

Later in 1973 Kaleidoscope started a Thursday night VHF service on 94.4Mhz. Called K-FM it replaced Radio Star in the LTIR network. It added a great strain to the workload of the station and consequently several broadcasts were missed as the main effort went into the MW Sunday broadcasts. In those days far more people listened to MW than FM. When Britain finally got legal commercial radio in October 1973 the LTIR closed their network down, and K-FM closed with it.

Dave Owen unpacking the transmitter on location - apparently this transmitter was built on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, taken straight to site with little testing and in the middle of the day one of the smoothing caps exploded with a loud bang and lots of smoke. The transmitter continued to work, only no one would go near it to change tapes.

Early in 1974 Dave Owen left Kaleidoscope to work on the offshore station Radio Atlantis which broadcast for a few months from the Belgian coast. He later joined Radio Caroline and then went on to a professional career in ILR. In spite of this loss, Kaleidoscope continued as London's top pirate. By then the Big K had developed its own style, with the original brash US presentation giving way to a more informal relaxed sound. The pace may have slowed, but programmes were still very slick and polished.

Pat again, this time tuning up the twin 807 transmitter. The unit in front of the car battery is a transistorised inverter which converted the 12 volts from the car battery into about 350v for the valves.

Early in 1975 there was a split in the station, when several members left to set up City Sounds. This was a bad time for Kaleidoscope, and several broadcasts were missed, however they eventually got things back together and the station continued. Around this time a new programme was introduced, and at noon every Sunday Kaleidoscope presented Music Week: a hour of music and radio news, plus a look at the new releases and the station's chart, the Big K Tip Top Thirty. The 1/4" masters of many of the 'news' sections of these programmes survive, and provide a fascinating look at the music and radio scene in 1975.

Also in 1975 Abie Cohen decided that legal ILR stations which had started in 1973 did not meet up to expectations, so he decided to re-open the LTIR. This time, Kaleidoscope was to provide the Tuesday night slot. Unfortunately the LTIR network did not return to it's previous strength, and few of the Tuesday evening programmes on VHF took place.

At this time the IBA began tests on 1151KHz, which were to cause a great deal of interference to the Big K. In March 1975 Kaleidoscope tried moving a channel further away to 1124KHz, but it was not enough, and at the end of December they moved to 1358 KHz, announced as 226m.

By the beginning of 1976 Kaleidoscope was struggling to find enough staff to put out the Sunday broadcasts. This problem became severe in early February, and eventually the operators felt that they didn't want The Big K to become unreliable and die slowly. Instead they decided to close the station permanently, and on February 22nd 1976 Radio Kaleidoscope made it's final broadcast. This included an hour long look back at the history of the station.

Packing up after the final broadcast. Brian Horne (aka Abie Cohen) prepares to commemorate the end of an era. Also featured are Steve Hampshire and Bob Kelso. Many pirates could be identified by holes in their clothes at waist level - caused by battery acid residue when carrying batteries like this.

Radio Kaleidoscope was undoubtedly one of London's most professional pirates. At a time when commercial radio in Britain had not quite established itself, Kaleidoscope sounded considerably more exciting. It is a testament to the high quality of the programming on the Big K that several of their presenters would go on to long careers in legitimate radio.

If you have any recordings of this station please contact us so we can add them to our archive and they can be enjoyed by others.

The Radio Eric archive holds the following recording(s) of this station:

[1] Andy Walker remembers the Whitsun holiday broadcasts in 1975:

If you have any recordings or photographs of this station you can share please get in touch

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