Why Radio Caroline should really have been called Radio John

Ronan O'Rahilly is on record as saying that he named Radio Caroline after the daughter of President John F Kennedy. Indeed, the tale is that O'Rahilly opened the newspaper to see a large picture of the President sitting in the Oval Office of the Whitehouse busily working on some papers. By contrast, at his feet, playing under the table was, according to O'Rahilly, Kennedy's little daughter Caroline. She was young, playing and being disruptive, O'Rahilly maintains, and hence the station would be called Caroline.

However, the whole story is a complete myth and misrepresentation of the actual true facts. No picture exists of Caroline playing at the president's feet. In truth, under the Oval Office table was her brother, John Kennedy Junior. The picture shows him playing quietly with a wooden toy, stopping only to smile at the camera, probably after being called to by the photographer, and not being in the slightest way disruptive, despite 'disruptive' supposedly being what the new radio station would be in honour of the 'disruptive' Kennedy child.

If the radio station had honestly been named after the child under the Oval Office table, it would not have been called Radio Caroline, but Radio John. Although the station was not, for reasons that aren't clear, actually called Radio John, it did manage to mimic the child under the Oval Office in other ways. It came on the air and was not in the slightest bit 'disruptive' in its early years such that it was constantly on the brink of going bust, despite being the first UK commercial radio station. In fact, many times it very nearly went .... down the John.