Legendary 2SM breakfast announcer, Ian MacRae, spent two years of his early career in “Pirate Radio,” in the mid 1960’s. First on Radio City on a North Sea oil rig and then on Caroline South, on a ship moored off the English coast. After seeing the movie, Macca reckons the producers have not allowed the facts to interfere with their own version of events…

In the sixties, DJ’s on the UK’s “Pirate Radio” ships did nothing but party and have sex with the constant visiting supply of lusty young ladies. Oh yes, and present the occasional radio program, which was totally off the cuff as no preparation was required.

At least that’s what the new movie “The Boat That Rocked” would have you believe.

OK, you expect a movie to have a bit of artistic license and it’s great that a whole generation of British kids will now be aware that it was us broadcasters who were directly responsible for forcing later Governments to legalise land-based commercial radio in the UK.

However I squirmed for the over-long 135 minutes the movie runs watching misrepresentation after misrepresentation of what really went on flash up on the screen.

Firstly I have to take issue with the title of the movie “The Boat That Rocked.” Radio Caroline, on which the story is based, was a “ship” not a boat. People row boats.

Secondly no visitors were ever allowed on board – for insurance and safety reasons. The idea you could invite 200 fans and have them running all over the ship is ridiculous when you have generators running and transmitters putting out 50,000 watts. Which makes the scene where the two guys compete to climb the mast even more ridiculous.

The few visitors who did come on board were people like pop stars and entertainers, for on-air interviews, and they had to have special permission from head office in London.

The movie makes no reference to the station even having a head office, which was actually a salubrious building just off Park Lane, but gives the impression the whole operation was totally run from the ship.

I’m being careful not to put any spoilers in this review, in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, but you’ll probably be a bit confused as to what the Bill Nighy character is supposed to be. He seems to be a combined ship’s captain, Program Director and owner.

In real life there were two sets of crew on the ship…the seamen, headed by the Captain, and the radio station people such as DJ’s, engineers and technicians. Neither group had the faintest idea what the other actually did.

The movie makes it appear there was only one radio ship, which they call Radio Rock, with one DJ telling his listeners he has 25 million people listening to him. In fact there were at least twelve stations that I can think of broadcasting around the coastline, with about six positioned off London, all with a combined audience of 25 million.

The movie really totally misses the point when the police attempt to raid the ship to close it down. The vessel was in international waters and outside the jurisdiction of any British authority. A raid like that would have been real piracy by the police.

The only way the government could eventually close the pirates down was by cutting their supply lines. They made it illegal to supply them with everything from advertising to food, water, fuel or even supplying labour. That is, working for them. Come ashore and you’d get arrested.

That’s when I decided two years at sea was enough and came home to Australia where you aren’t a criminal if you work for commercial radio.

As for the movie enjoy it for what it is – entertainment. But don’t regard it as history.