Radio Dublin

30/03/2018

March 1979...

23/03/2018

58 Inchicore Rd...Late 80’s...

16/03/2018

Taking Care of Business...

12/03/2018

Vincent St. Studio early 90’s...

01/09/2016

30/06/2016

22/06/2016

Christmas FM Training provides intensive 2-day training courses for those who would like to learn about radio. Book now!

22/06/2016

This is the narrow laneway where Philip Cairns' school bag was found six days after he vanished in October 1986. It's a shortcut that local people use between Ann Devlin Road and Ann Devlin Drive, two busy residential areas in Ballyroan. The garda in the photograph is (for some unknown reason) handling the school bag, which I have always found strange considering its relevance when it might at some later stage be used to cross-match DNA found on and inside the bag with that of a suspect.

Philip's bag was found here by two young local girls that evening. It had been raining a lot that day but the bag was dry when it was found, prompting investigating gardai to believe that it had only been placed in the lane a short while before it was discovered.

In the current investigation it is believed that a young nine-year-old girl left the bag in the lane that evening, having been forced to do so by her abuser Eamon Cooke. It's not known if Cooke had driven her to the entrance of the laneway, but the entire story seems highly unlikely.

This laneway is used mostly by locals as a shortcut. It's a narrow pedestrian laneway so it wouldn't be well-known to people who don't frequently walk it, and not known at all to people from outside the area. In other words it would be only used by locals walking between the top half of the Ann Devlin estate to the lower half. It is used daily as a short cut by many local people to get to the local parish church.

I have been asked this week if Philip might have used this laneway as a shortcut to school. Most likely not as it would have taken him away from the most direct route to the school, which is straight down the Ballyroan Road where he lived, and then right onto Hillside Park where Colaiste Eanna is situated.

The Wednesday Philip's school bag was found was during the college's October mid-term break. What is interesting is that the gardai re-opened the college that day and asked all of the students to return to their classrooms for questioning throughout the afternoon. Was it just a coincidence that the school bag re-appeared that day when there was a huge amount of student activity in the area? Many of the students from the Ann Devlin estate and beyond would have been using the laneway on their way back from the college that evening. Was that why the school bag was left in the laneway so that it would be spotted by passing students?

Surely it seems highly unlikely that Cooke would choose such an off-the-beaten-track location to drop the school bag (assuming he had it in the first place). He wasn't from the area so why did he decide on a secluded laneway (if he knew it at all) that his nine-year-old child victim would have to walk up in order to drop the bag? The more this investigation continues the less I believe that Cooke had anything remotely to do with Philip's disappearance.

I believe the school bag was left in the laneway that evening by a local, or certainly someone who was very familiar with the estate's footpaths and side roads. It might have been a student who left it there while there was no one else in the lane. It might have been the parent of a student. It might have been someone who found Philip's school bag thrown into their garden but didn't want to bring it to the police for fear of being incriminated in the boy's disappearance. It might also have been the last person to have seen Philip alive six days earlier.

I spoke this week to a man who asked to talk to me to "put the record straight". His son was savagely abused by Cooke when he was a very young boy. So now we know that Cooke wasn't just exclusively drawn to small girls. He also destroyed the lives of young boys. However when I asked this man if he believed that Cooke had killed Philip, he told me "No way!" He reckoned that Cooke was too streetwise to do what gardai suspect he may have done.

Perhaps someone reading this piece today knows exactly what happened to Philip Cairns that Thursday afternoon in October 1986. This all happened within a local context I believe. I also believe it might have been a terrible brutal accident - perhaps an episode of bullying that resulted in Philip's death? An incident involving other students? Perhaps a confrontation with someone locally who knew Philip well but never intended to kill him. We might never know. Or maybe we might.

Students who attended Colaiste Eanna between 1986 and 1991 are now adults in their mid- to late-40s. Many of them will be parents themselves, possibly with children in their early teens - children who are now the same age as Philip was when he disappeared.

Being asked to come forward when you are only a teenager to give evidence in the case of a young missing boy who you went to school with, or knew distantly through school, is a daunting expectation. Even when you're in your twenties and thirties the prospect of coming forward to say you knew or remember something is terrifying. But as we move into our forties we begin to see life differently, especially when we are often looking at that life through the eyes of our vulnerable children (much as we were back then).

We begin in mid-life to realise our own limitations and misgivings, and we also become more aware of our own mortality. Things we either saw or did in our own teenage lives come back to haunt us because we are now hoping that the mistakes we might have made are not repeated by this younger generation.

It's often easy to hide behind the ego of youth and believe it will protect us forever. But then we realise we are no longer that young person. Instead we have become someone who wrestles with the uncertainties of life and the deep regrets we might be reminded of everyday - a struggle with past secrets that no longer have a place in our lives.

Maybe someone reading this knows something about what happened to Philip Cairns. And maybe now the voice in their head that has remained still for many years, the same voice that is screaming out and can no longer be silenced, is telling them to say something to someone. They might want to say something now - because after all these years they feel they owe it to a boy who like them was only just beginning to experience life as a young teenager. Sadly a life cut short without a trace of a shadow on it.

20/06/2016

The Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame has been created to honour those men, women and organisations who have engaged, enraged and enthralled us and who have significantly contributed to Irish culture and history through the medium of Irish broadcasting.

18/06/2016

I don't believe that Eamon Cooke killed Philip Cairns. Nor do I believe that Philip knew Cooke or had ever met him. I don't believe Philip visited Radio Dublin on the afternoon he disappeared, or on any day previously. In fact there is little if anything that I believe now in all that I have been hearing and reading about in this investigation in recent days. There are only two certain truths here that we can believe so far: Eamon Cooke is dead, and Philip Cairns is still missing after thirty years, presumed dead.

In recent days I have written about my own personal feelings and beliefs in relation to this confusing, misrepresented investigation. I have been criticised by some people for "daring to do the work of the detectives". I have been told by some that I am sending out the wrong message (whatever that means). Let me reassure those individuals that I intend to continue writing about this investigation, which is now descending into farce. If people don't want to think outside the box, then that's their business.

With each new day, the original story of this mysterious woman who was nine at the time of Philip's disappearance (who came forward recently with the only evidence known that Cooke killed Philip) seems more and more implausible and far-fetched. If you were to read all the various reports in recent days carefully it turns out that there were in fact THREE nine-year-olds who all have crucial parts to play in the unfolding of this new evidence! This is all quickly becoming hearsay as it no longer makes any sense whatsoever.

The field in this picture is, according to Paul Williams in Thursday's Irish Independent, "where gardai believe [the] schoolboy was buried". Based on what evidence I have to ask? None to be perfectly honest. Cooke's second wife urged gardai 10 years ago when he went to prison to dig this field as she believed that Cooke had buried a large sealed container "20 feet" below ground. Why didn't they dig then? Was it because he was still alive?

Williams states in his article that "one eyewitness has told of seeing Cooke using a JCB to dig a large hole on the property but said the DJ never divulged what he was doing at the time". Who taught Cooke how to drive and use a JCB, and where was the crane that would have been needed to lower the container into the hole? Who did he hire the JCB from? How did he drive it up the narrow winding roads into the Dublin mountains? And when did this "eyewitness" come forward? None of this makes any real sense to me.

According to the same article, "a woman, who was aged nine at that time, has told gardai that she saw the schoolboy being beaten to death by Cooke..." She never said that. She said she walked into the room and saw Philip lying unconscious and bleeding. She never witnessed any assault.

Another point made in this highly flawed and fabricated report: "It is understood that Cooke had arranged to bring Philip Cairns to his radio station". Where did that information come from? Cooke told detectives on his death bed that he "knew of" Philip Cairns, not that he "knew" him. Two completely different scenarios. Everyone in Ireland "knew of" Philip. Within a week of his disappearance he had become the most famous 13-year-old in the country. Cooke also told detectives during his final interview, days before he died, that he "never harmed" Philip.

The Indo article also claims that "Philip reacted furiously when Cooke made an advance on him and that in the ensuing row the young boy was assaulted and killed". This is complete fiction as there were no witnesses in that room at the time of this incident. That's if we are to believe that it happened at all. Personally I don't.

I am not for a moment defending Cooke in anyway whatsoever. The world is a better place without such evil monsters preying on vulnerable victims. (I was also abused when I was Philip's age, so I know what these dirty, evil bastards are capable of doing to a small child, both physically and emotionally.)

Philip's mother Alice said this week that Philip had no interest in radio whatsoever. He was a member of the Legion Of Mary, a pious, quiet and respectful young boy, who had no daft ideas of mitching from school and running away on a mad adventure to a pirate radio station.

None of the evidence and information that we are being carefully drip-fed this past week makes any sense to me. It carries a horrible smell of something that just doesn't add up. It's as if it's being cleverly added to and doctored all the time as the demand requires.

Cooke is now an easy target to blame for Philip's death because he is dead. They can pretty much say anything they want now about Cooke's involvement in Philip's death. And what's worse is that the public are prepared to believe all they are hearing and reading because it's coming from an 'official' source.

My main concern today is that by blaming Philip's death on a well-known, convicted pa******le who is no longer able to answer the questions, the real killer will remain at large forever - vindicated and blameless for the rest of his life; while the rest of the country is led to believe that this foggy, contradictory investigation might eventually be seen as an outstanding success.

17/06/2016

The Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame has been created to honour those men, women and organisations who have engaged, enraged and enthralled us and who have significantly contributed to Irish culture and history through the medium of Irish broadcasting.

16/06/2016

“You still have to forgive anyway, for me to have my own peace – you have to forgive.”

16/06/2016

This is Eamon Cooke in the studio in Radio Dublin sometime during the mid 1980s. By then, stories about his violence and abuse were circulating widely. Typically back in 1970s Ireland, no one seemed prepared to tackle him. But that was starting to change and go against Cooke in the years that followed.

During the 1970s, Cooke had surrounded himself with a screen of power and protection: government ministers, local councillors, local priests, and - it has been said but never refuted - a number of gardai. Of course none of this will ever be proved as many of the so-called old guard from back in the day are now dead.

Most of Cooke's young victims came from the areas around Radio Dublin - Inchicore, Crumlin, and Ballyfermot. Clearly someone in local power knew that these attrocities were taking place, but a blind eye was turned for many years while these tiny children suffered. It is all like a screenplay of the life of Jimmy Saville, except that Eamon Cooke has now been cast in the lead role.

However, in 1984 Cooke was arrested and charged with fire-bombing the home of one of his former star DJs. The DJ had become close friends with one of Cooke's former victims who had had a child by him (Cooke).

Roll the clock forward to October 1986, the same month that Philip Cairns disappeared.

Cooke and his four violent thugs appeared before Judge Frank Rowe in Dublin's Circuit Criminal Court on the 21st of October - two days before Philip disappeared, on the charges that arose almost two years before. The four men each received suspended sentences for the arson attack, but Cooke's barrister pleaded with the judge not to send Cooke to jail as he would lose his radio business which was worth close to a hundred thousand pounds (huge money thirty years ago). The judge told Cooke he would reserve sentencing until the 3rd of November.

Cooke was now a man on borrowed time, as far as he was concerned. He would have to wait two weeks to find out if he was going to prison for a long stretch. And then two days later, on October 23rd, Philip vanished.

Does it not strike you as strange that a man awaiting a possible prison sentence is now the main suspect in abducting a young boy? Surely he would have had a lot more troublesome expectations filling his mind rather than the notion two days later of cruising the streets of a well-to-do Dublin suburb forty minutes from his radio station looking for children to pick up? I would have thought that Cooke would have tried to avoid any further confrontation with the law until he knew where he stood with Judge Frank Rowe two weeks later?

Cooke was given a four-year suspended sentence in November.

And then there's the mystery surrounding the schoolbag, which was found sitting against the wall of the narrow lane that many locals, including Philip, used as a shortcut. It was discovered sitting there, dry despite the heavy rain all day, six days after Philip's disappearance. Where had it come from? Who'd been keeping it for the previous six days? Its contents - books and copies - were still intact.

The woman who came forward with new evidence recently claimed that Cooke had told another one of his victims (also a nine-year-old) to leave it in the lane where it was eventually found by two young local girls.

This all seems very far-fetched, does it not? Surely if Cooked had killed Philip, then he wouldn't want to leave any evidence behind whatsoever? But yet, here we're led to believe that he might have been taunting the huge search operation by 'planting' the biggest clue they could ever hope to find.

On the other hand, maybe - just maybe - Philip's schoolbag was simply picked up by someone who knew him, possibly another student, or a parent, shortly after he disappeared. Whoever picked it up might have brought it home for safekeeping. They may not even have known Philip - although it's most likely his name would have been written on the books and copies inside.

It's worth remembering that over that long October bank holiday weekend very few people knew that Philip had gone missing. There's also the possibility that his disappearance coincided with the school's midterm break which lasted a full week. Families and friends might have been away for the extended holiday.

By the following Monday however Philip's disappearance was very public. Maybe the student, or whoever, panicked and kept the bag at home, afraid to bring it to the police in case they thought they would be treated with suspicion?

And then, maybe, once the enormity of what was happening became too big to bear any longer for this young student, or whoever it might have been, they simply left the schoolbag back in the lane where they had found it - once it had got dark that Wednesday evening. That was when it was spotted by the two young girls who brought it forward.

I always believe that it's worth keeping an open mind when it comes to what might have happened, but also - equally important - what might not have happened.

13/06/2016

Eamon Cooke, who has been accused of murdering Philip Cairns, had a dark past

11/06/2016

I feel both sick and sad today. This is a picture of the schoolbag that belonged to Philip Cairns. The bag was discovered a few days after Philip vanished on the 23rd October 1986. He was on his way back to school in Scoil Eanna after his lunch that afternoon when he disappeared.

I had just come home from England at the time and was working here for a pirate radio station called Energy 103 when the shocking news broke. I wasn't aware at that time that Philip and I were related back through the years of the Cairns and O'Callaghan families.

Last week, Eamon Cooke, a relentless pa******le in his day who preyed on young children, died in a Dublin hospice. He had been serving a prison sentence in Arbour Hill prison for repeatedly abusing and ra**ng a number of young girls in the 1970s when he became too ill to remain in prison.

A few weeks ago, in May, a woman came forward and gave evidence to gardai that Eamon Cooke had killed Philip. The investigating officers quickly believed her evidence to be highly credible. Following her statement to them they visited Cooke in the hospice, who, during questioning, acknowledged a lot of the woman's evidence as being true and accurate. However he did not tell the gardai where Philip's body lies buried. Cooke died shortly after the interview.

Philip was 13 years old. He clearly had an interest in radio as Cooke had promised him a visit to Radio Dublin, which he owned. During that visit, according to the evidence of this woman who came forward last month, Philip was struck on the head with "an implement" by Cooke. He died as a result.

My thoughts and my prayers today, as I write this, are with Alice, Philip's mam, his sisters - Mary, Sandra, Helen, and Suzanne, and his brother Eoin. Philip's dad Phil died a couple of years ago, heartbroken for his son for so long.

Eamon Cooke was a prolific pa******le. He took advantage of young children who called to the radio station, looking to play requests or be employed parttime as telephonists. His history as a child abuser is well documented by some of the women who survived his reign of horror and abuse. And I know that some of them will read this today.

I have never spoken about this before, even though I have been asked about my time at the station (which was brief). I started working at Radio Dublin in April 1979. Many of the DJs had left to go to 'Big D Radio', which was the bright light on the medium wave dial back then. Little did I know that some of them knew that there was something "all wrong" about Cooke. I just thought he wasn't paying the staff. I didn't care if it was just down to money: I just wanted to be a DJ with my own radio show. No one ever spoke about the abuse that was going on behind the scenes. Maybe no one knew, apart from his victims.

I saw the chance to fulfil my dreams as an 18-year-old to get myself on air and so I grabbed it. I sent in my demo tape and went on air the following Saturday night at 8pm. Little did I know that Cooke - a hero at the time when it came to running the most popular radio station in Dublin - was ra**ng children in a room upstairs above the studio, while his DJs were presenting their radio shows in the sitting room downstairs that overlooked Sarsfield Road, in Inchicore. I knew nothing about his 'alter ego'. Looking back now, it was a truly shocking time.

With the news I have been reading over the past few days I just can't stay silent. Philip would be 44 this year if he were still here. When I read about the new revelations this week, I felt a chill run up my spine. Cooke was a monster, on a par with Brendan Smyth. He was a predator. He was no different to Jimmy Saville. I know that now. I didn't have a clue back then.

Philip Cairns was inquisitive, innocent, gentle, and gullible - just like I was when I was 13. He clearly had a love for, and a leaning towards radio - just like I had when I was his age. It's ironic and strange and sad and nauseating to think that the person who gave me my 'big break' on the airwaves will now, forever more, be suspected of murdering my young cousin who, like me, just wanted to fulfill his dream of being a DJ.

Bless you, Philip. I wish I knew what your favourite song was as you hummed it to yourself on your way back to school that day thirty years ago. Rest in peace.

Today I want to send my love and best wishes to Philip's mother, his sisters and brother. Thinking of you all on this sad, strange day.

10/06/2016

F

Gardaí believe they may have solved the mystery of the disappearance of Philip Cairns, the 13-year-old schoolboy who went missing in Dublin over 30 years ago.

02/01/2016

Here's a mix of around 3 dozen station closedowns from December 1988 featuring ... Sunshine 101, Q102, Capitol, Treble TR, Class FM, & Heartbeat from Dublin, ABC & WLR Waterford, AMS & Kilkenny Community Radio, CLR Carlow, Premiere Radio Clonmel, ERI Cork, LCR Laois, Z100 & Roscommon Radio, Twin Cou…

10/12/2015

Some old "legal" Radio listings from the 90's...

18/09/2015

Thanks to all our new followers..!

30/04/2015

Thanks to all our new followers..!

08/04/2015

Please support a fantastic cause. Clares wish foundation granting wishes to those with a terminal illness. Wedding fair on in Clontarf Castle Sunday 12th April.

26/09/2014

Thanks to all our new likes/followers ..!

02/06/2014

A video of pictures of Irish Pirate radio station Radio Dublin

27/05/2014

Good Luck ... ...

27/05/2014

24/05/2014

A montage of guest some of our guests from Series One of Dublin's Pirate Days

20/05/2014

Radio Courses Bray Co. Wicklow

19/05/2014

Radio Dublin Dj Reunion, Hilton Kilmainham, Sat 12th July 20.00

01/04/2014

PLEASE SHARE; MISSING CLONDALKIN.
Trace Missing Persons Ireland is looking for your help in locating 38 year old Sean Fogarty. Sean is missing since 12 noon Wednesday 19th March. He was last seen outside his family home in Clondalkin Dublin 22. Sean is described as Between 5.10 and 5.11 in height and weighs approximately 13 stone/ 180 lbs, he has bright blue eyes and tightly shaved brown hair with grey flecks in the sides.
He was wearing a Khaki Green Parka jacket with furry hood, beige/brown combat trousers with large pockets on the sides and navy/black Vans trainers.
His family are desperate to find him!!!
If anybody has any information or knows anything regarding the whereabouts of Sean Fogarty can they please contact Clondalkin Garda Station on (01) 666 7609 or the Garda Confidential 1800 666 111 or contact Trace Missing Persons Ireland at 085 8744032 or email [email protected]
www.tracemissingpersonsireland.ie

15/02/2014

Listen to Bernard Delaney / Radio Dublin Chl 2 Mark Grace | Explore the largest community of artists, bands, podcasters and creators of music &...