There are a number of books out there about anorak-loved radio stations. There's that newish one about Radio Jackie, the one written by Peter Moore about his involvement and the subsequent death of the offshore Caroline, the one from Paul Rusling about Laser, or the autobiography from Johnnie Walker, and so on and so on.

Now, the Jackie one and the Peter Moore openly say that they've made bits up, or changed things for comic or dramatic effect. Indeed, Moore's book openly plays down the involvement or importance of some of the legends of Caroline in favour of always showing himself in a better light, and places people on board together who actually were from different eras and never on the Ross at the same time. The Jackie book credits the wrong person with standing up to the then 'GPO' (a major and very important part of Jackie's history, surely?), merges people into one hybrid person for the book, and changes stories from the truth to a lovely dramatic fantasy.

But apparently none of this matters because the books have a little note in the front of them saying that they are mainly made up. Hmmm. That's alright then.

Now, anoraks are, on the whole, sticklers for the truth. They love to chronicle what's really happening, cutting through the spin of the day. That's why anoraks were quick to focus on the extensive collection of anomalies in Johnnie Walker's book relating to his time on Caroline, and others have moaned about the 'lies' relating to other parts of his life post Caroline.

So, to get to my point. Well, two points.

Firstly, I don't understand why anoraks seem to just shrug off these lies and accept them just because they were written by 'persons of note' from the world of anoraky radio. Anoraks are the first to complain when the history of radio is mis-reported on TV or documentaries or offshore radio is depicted in a theatrical way that looks nothing like it really did. Surely, anoraks should be up in arms about the writers of these books full of wild inaccuracies and false stories about a subject that deserves the truth to be told about it? Yet nothing. Just blind acceptance. Anoraks should be ashamed of themselves.

Secondly, when all the anoraks who witnessed the truth are finally dead, then the only record for future generations will be these made up stories and mis-representations of the era. Regrettably, future generations will know nothing else and history will have been successfully re-written by these authors, who will be quite possibly be seen as the heroes from an era they were mainly on the sidelines of. Should we all be ashamed that the subject that we love will have completely changed from the truth in favour of the nicely crafted fantasies? Don't we owe the real memories something more than that?

As a side point, doesn't it make you realise just how easy it is for people to re-write history. How much of the history of something as close as the Second World War has been re-written away from the truth? Let alone the history of thousands of years ago!

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* Christopher England just said that *