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A thread has appeared at the other place.

Of course and as usual it has gone off at a tangent as to who had the best radio mast from 40 odd years ago.

When Laser 558 came along it wiped the floor with the commercial stations in the South East and yes, with Radio Caroline also. The commercial stations very much wanted rid of Laser.
It seems that the idea for the station was formed by one John Kenning who found finance in Ireland. He then recruited Paul Rusling as a consultant.
Without casting aspersions ( which I am not ) anyone can set uo as a consultant.

I remember long ago being invited by Paul Graham Radio Consultant, to a radio business meeting in Harwich. Paul persuaded me to collect him from Frinton but on the journey my car started to run badly. I told Paul that he would have to make his own way home while I tried to get the car back to London. He had to borrow £10 from me for the train fare. My view was that he could not consult himself out of a paper bag.
Now I do not now what service Paul Rusling rendered to Laser only that, as he states, his invoice came to £7900 and was not paid,
I do recall a comment by someone involved with Laser ( possibly John Catlett or some such ) who stated' As a broadcast engineer Paul Rusling makes a very good publican ' as indeed that is what he was , a pub landlord. I do not know if the comment was made in anger or as false justification for not paying the bill.
So Paul then wrote a book, possibly the first of many, as an expose titled Lid Off Laser. Very shortly after oublication, someone set light to Paul's pub.

He formed the view, using circumstantial evidence, that a person or persons involved with Laser had carried this out and thus had two reasons to hate them.
At this point I should refer you to the TV news segment that opens the relevant G.S thread. You uill see that it features Eddie Blackwell and Young Paul who to be fair may have been young in 1985. The gist that I take from it ( but you can judge for yourselves ) is that having been wronged and knowing that the boss of Essex Radio ( along with many others ) wanted Laser to fall silent, Paul sought off the record financial help to make this happen to get his revenge and please all the commercial stations in the South East. Blackwell was a bit too canny and while saying that a silent Laser would make him happy, he stopped short of any offer that may later implicate him.

One may understand Paul's motive, but that has to be set against how he would have then been viewed by the millions of people that the staion was entertainng.

But there is a twist as further down the thread Paul says that he did not wish to shut Laser at all but merely to stage a coup that would restore the UK management and oust the Americans. That being so if Blackwell had provided money only to find that he had financed a management take over, he surely would have thought that he had been double crossed.

I keep turning this over in my head but as I say the info is there and I wil leave you to decide.

PM.