| Duncan Larkin is the latest
presenter to join the Caroline South team. Check out his weekly show from Vienna, Austria
every Saturday night at 22.00 CET (21.00 UTC). Currently presenting the morning show on
Austrian public radio's national youth music network FM4, Duncan has a close affinity with
Radio Caroline.
"I used to listen to the original Caroline South ship under the pillows with my
transistor radio when I was a young lad back in the 1960s. The excitement and energy of
these offshore 'pirate' broadcasts really made me want to get into radio."
At University Duncan was in charge of booking bands for the ents commitee.
"I remember booking the Cure before they were really well known, and the week that
they played, they had entered the charts for the first time at no.8."
A gifted linguist, speaking French, German, Italian and some Dutch and Spanish; Duncan
also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where he wrote his thesis on the city's radio-libres
(free radio) movement of the 1970s.
His first radio job was with the London community station Radio Thamesmead. From there
he had a short spell with Radio Nova in Italy, before joining Riviera Radio and then
Sunshine Radio in Antibes, France working the breakfast shift on both stations.
"Sunshine was fun," recalls Larkin explaining, "we were in the heart of the
Riviera yachting & tecchie community. I was often joined by listeners on my Sunday
lunchtime show and the results were often riotous. On one show, someone let off fireworks
in the studio. I was fired, but reinstated after one week following a petition from
listeners!"
From Sunshine Radio, Duncan joined Radio Aire in Leeds where he took over James Whales'
nightly phone-in show. He then went to World Radio Geneva in Switzerland and Blue Danube
Radio in Vienna and stayed with it as it transformed in to the alternative youth music
station Radio FM4, broadcasting his morning shows in English and German.
"It is a big thrill for me to broadcast on Caroline, the station that inspired me
to get into radio," says Duncan adding "Caroline has a musical freedom which is
pretty unique these days when radio has become so formulated and stylised."
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