Everyone within the radio community’s followers has their own favourite or favourites. You can list by intensely listened-to station or by the decade in which you listened to one or more stations. My first intense listening took place in the 1960s, listening to quite a few stations with regularity until mid-August 1967. After that, only the offshore radio stations Radio Veronica and Radio Caroline remained. Regarding Caroline, I had been listening to Robbie Dale with some regularity since April 1966, which continued after the introduction of MOA until he was last heard on Caroline.
Then there was a period when he worked for Radio Veronica and later for TROS Hilversum 3 and also got his own television programme “JAM on tv”. And in that period after 14 August 1967, he was the favourite English-language deejay for me. Robbie Robinson, as his full name was, collected a wealth of articles published about him in various newspapers during his rich career, as well as articles he wrote himself in the broadcasting magazine TROS Kompas. Let’s see who Robbie Dale was, and to do so we take a look at our radio friend Jon Myer in London who wrote the following on his site Pirate Hall of Fame, among other things:
‘Robbie Dale was born in Littleborough, Lancashire, on 21st of April 1940. After spells as an antiques dealer, press agent, salesman, bellboy and serving in the army, Robbie was working as a DJ in a discotheque in Kensington, west London, when he was spotted by Radio Caroline’s Gerry Duncan. Gerry suggested that he should audition for the station which resulted in Robbie joining Caroline South in April 1966.
He took over the evening Caroline Club Request Show, which became known as Robbie Dale’s Diary. He appointed himself ‘Admiral’ when he founded the ‘Beat Fleet’, an organisation which doubled as free radio supporters association and fan club. Robbie used both sides of the same single as his theme tunes at different times. The A-side was I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman by Whistling Jack Smith but he also used the B-side The British Grin And Bear. Previously he had also used Yellow Jacket by The Ventures and for a brief time it was Fugue no.5 in D Major by the Swingle Singers.
After the Marine Offences Act became law he elected to stay with Radio Caroline and was joint Programme Controller and Senior DJ for the South ship with Johnnie Walker. He presented the morning show until a stomach ulcer forced him to leave the ship in January 1968, although he continued to work for the station on shore. After Caroline closed down in March 1968 he joined Radio Veronica, the Dutch pirate, later moving to Hilversum radio and TV.
He returned to the UK in 1973 and ran an office-cleaning company. He was involved in a failed bid for the Belfast commercial radio franchise, which went instead to Downtown Radio. He later went to Dublin where he operated the very successful Sunshine Radio until government legislation closed it at the end of 1988. He then moved to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands having bought a holiday complex there. He and his wife Stella continued to live on the island after retirement but sadly Robbie died on 31st August 2021.’
It was Martin van der Ven who visited his widow Stella on the island Lanzarote and got permission to make photos from Robbie’s scrapbooks.
So let’s dive in the Dale’s Diary and see what can be found there.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/offshoreradio/albums/72177720298475224/