We were up and running almost a month when Declan arrived with Mark Storey asking if we would consider them as D.Js, They brought along some demo tapes and we all agreed they were very professional and should go on. Radio Milinda was originally the brain-child of Jimmy McCabe who built the guts of the transmitter. When Jimmy brought up the idea, Jimmy Lynch and myself thought it was brilliant. The Name “Milinda” which should have been “Melinda”, was taken from the song “Come Away Melinda” as sung by Tim Rose.

Radio Milinda was born out of the fact that Jimmy McCabe, Jimmy Lynch and myself used to do discos around Dublin. We had a small 30Watt Valve amp and a pair of speakers and a mic. We usually supplied the music for the disco in the Belvedere Youth Club in Marlboro Street and The Boot Inn in Abbey Street, the latter being the brain-child of Dom Baker. We had always been mad on music and radio and from that, sprang the seeds for Radio Milinda.


Jimmy McCabe. Jimmy Lynch and myself first began test transmissions early on in 1972 from the upstairs of a youth club in Dublin 1. with a very small transmitter. Ger Wallace designed the Big Transmitter. Jimmy McCabe constructed it in a biscuit tin and (if memory serves me) the chassis of a broken E.C.G. machine. The aerial was spread from the roof of the tenements in Summerhill to the roof of the tenements in Sean Mc Dermott Street “No Mean Feat” (5 Stories High). It was a third of a kilometre (300Mtrs) long with a tap at 100Mtrs. It came into the station via the roof of my house in the Diamond (5 North Gloucester Place). One of my most vivid memories was of Jimmy McCabe and the Induction Coil he had made and attached to a light-bulb so that we could see the R.F.. When he held the coil close to the Aerial, the bulb lit…

We set up in two rooms in the basement. These rooms had been unused since the second world war and were used without alteration other than the cable run for power. There were no windows and the studio per say, was built of bits of orange boxes and whatever else came to hand. Everything worked. We never had to close down due to technical faults.

The first D.Js were Jimmy Lynch, Jimmy McCabe (McCabe’s Country) and myself Richie Kearns. We were later joined by Michael Lynch, Declan Meehan and Mark Storey and on one or two occasions by Fran Gleeson. Although it has been stated that our power output was of 50Watts, we had QSLs from Wales, Brighton and a bit further inland in the U.K.

I can remember the first test transmission from the Diamond. Jimmy McCabe and myself took a transistor radio and with Jimmy Lynch broadcasting, we set off to see how far the test transmissions was going. After getting as far as the Five Lamps and still with a perfect reception we hopped on a bus and headed in the direction of Dollymount. We Got off the bus just past Fairview Park and were elated as we still had perfect reception. When we got back and told Jimmy Lynch he was over the moon. We all were. That was it…Radio Milinda was born. We went on air in the evenings on week-days and all day Saturday and Sunday. I believe we had two or three 24hr sessions. There was always a geansaì-load of people sitting upstairs in the front parlour..(my bedroom).

From the outset, we decided that we would be non commercial. There was one exception, Dolphin Discs in Marlboro Street. They supplied us with the top ten every week. The ad’ ran something like this.. “The top ten was supplied by Dolphin Discs - Marlboro Street…Thanks Lads….!” We built up a fantastic collection of records. Hundreds of L.P.s and 45s. One Monday, my mother, under the affluence of incahol, loaded most of them into a pram and pawned them. It took every penny we had to get them back.
After that they were locked in the basement.

Michael Lynch joined us not long after the first broadcast and two or three weeks after that, one Sunday afternoon, there was a knock on the front door. Two young lads with transistors in their hands ask if they could talk to us with a view to them joining us. They had tracked us down using their radios as signal locators. After a few suspicious moments we let them in and had a good chat. They had demo tapes with them and we liked them a lot so they joined us and stayed with us till the end. They were Declan Meehan and Mark Story.

So many wonderful things happened to us in the “Milinda Days”. We met so many wonderful people. One who comes to mind straight away was James McGuinness who lived across from us in the Diamond. He had the most wonderful collection of records and I remember doing a four special on the life on Glen Miller thanks to his record collection. At the weekend the house was full of people who just wanted to sit around, listen and chat.


To Be Continued…