IN THE BEGINNING BEFORE MONITOR WAS BORN!!

The Southend & District branch of the Free Radio Campaign was run by three girls, Pam Bird (who lived in Benfleet, her parents ran a newsagents in the High Road, but that's long gone now), Jackie Fright and Lynn Strang. They produced the Info Sheet, which was just a single duplicated sheet (there were no photocopiers in those days - the page had to be typed onto a stencil and the stencil fitted to an inked roller, which was then rolled over the pages one-at-a-time. Printers used electric machines; clubs used one with a handle to turn if they could afford one; the very cheapest you held in your hand and rolled onto each sheet manually. I don't know if they had a duplicator of their own; it's logical to suppose that, as they also helped at the FRC head office in Rayleigh, they had the use of one there).

So one day in 1971 one of the girls got a job with the BBC, didn't want to know about Free Radio any more, so brought to Buster all the materials for the Info Sheet and said "you're the Editor now"!

Photo:- Theo Denker

The Editor of Monitor Magazine Roland C. “BUSTER” Pearson

Buster was housebound, often laid up in bed for weeks on end, unable to use his right arm - he didn't feel capable of producing an info sheet! But Andy Archer, who was a regular visitor in those days, gave him the encouragement and help he needed to take on the job. Together they produced a seven-page magazine! I guess one of the original girls got it duplicated. The mailing list in those days was only thirty people!

Andy Archer started out on Radio City, and Buster also had a soft spot for the station, which had been his next favourite after Caroline. So spurred on by the success of his first effort, he wrote to everyone who'd been involved with Radio City that he could find addresses for. He had enough replies to produce a feature-mag about the station. He came up with the idea of calling the mag "Monitor", but it wasn't yet his own magazine, it was still the journal of the S&DFRC. So the girls thought about it, and one of them came back a week later and announced she'd thought of a perfect name - "Monitor"! Buster just agreed it was a good name and got on with it!

Buster had a good neighbour called Colin Howard. He'd been there on Easter Saturday in 1964 and heard Caroline's opening broadcasts with Buster. Colin suggested that he could help out with the magazine; he could take the copy to work with him, get one of the secretaries to type it up, and get it printed. He was as good as his word, and he even designed a logo. It looked good. But Buster was crushingly disappointed with it, because the typist had made such a dog's breakfast of the copy. She'd left whole chunks out, and put other pieces in the wrong order, so that much of it didn't even make sense. At that point Buster vowed he would thereinafter do all the typing himself.

From Monitor 2 until Monitor 19, Buster typed every letter of every issue onto a stencil - with the exception of one page.

Page18 of Monitor 12, which was typed by the sub-editor, Penelope Page. The reason for this was that Buster was getting desperate to get the magazine to the printers but even at his best it took him two or three days to complete one stencil, and at that time he was going through a bad patch. This was before the days when he had Home Treatment for his haemophilia; too much typing could cause internal bleeding into his elbow joint, which would then incapacitate him for days or weeks and sometimes even resulted in a couple of weeks in hospital! So Penelope volunteered to do some typing, and reluctantly he let her do one page; but it wasn't up to his high standards, so that was the last typing she did until computerisation.

Buster had his own typewriter, with his favourite typeface, which was called "Shaded Elite". He cut the stencils for Monitor 2 on this machine, but it was clear to him when he saw the printed copy that it was a poor typeface to use for the job, as the bold font hadn't cut well, and the inking was patchy. Buster then took a decision which represented a major commitment to continue to produce the magazine - he spent his savings on a new typewriter, an Adler Gabrielle which was tailor-made for cutting stencils. As he had only a tiny disability allowance to live on, saving up for something took a long time. It had taken him about ten years to save up for a Communications Receiver! Thus it was a heavy decision to make; and he had to let his old faithful typewriter with his favourite typeface go in part exchange.

Another problem was actually getting the magazine printed. By Monitor 3, the circulation had risen from 30 to 300; Pam and Lynn were no longer involved, and Colin, for personal reasons, was no longer on the doorstep. Buster was involved at the time with a project called "Radio Recovery". This was a scheme to have programmes recorded by well-known disc jockies to be distributed to hospital radio stations throughout the country. The studio was in Buster's bedroom! His partner in this project was John Steven, who lived in Brentwood, about twenty miles from Benfleet. John found a printer, a Mrs Cronin who ran The Iris Toy Shop in the Arcade in Brentwood. He would take the stencils to her and bring back the printed pages. Then they had to be assembled into magazines, the magazines put into envelopes, the envelopes addressed and stamped, and finally taken to the post. This was growing into a big job, and was beyond Buster's capabilities.

From Monitor 2 onward, Diane Foale is listed as "Circulation Officer". Diana's parents garden backed onto Buster's, so she'd grown up with "Uncle Buster" as a friend and mentor. Her father had put a gate between the gardens and Diane was at home in Buster's home as in her own! Thus she stepped in and, with the aid of her boyfriend, Alex, took over the tasks of assembling and mailing all the magazines.

1972 saw great changes and strides forward for Monitor!.

Radio Caroline returned to the airwaves in September 1972 after an absence of five-and-a-half years. Much drama ensued over the following few months, including the Caroline radioship, the Mi Amigo, being towed into Amsterdam and then sailing out again. Buster published the background story to these events, and it wasn't long before Monitor was being heavily advertised over the air as the only magazine with the true story of Caroline's escapades. Orders for the magazine poured in. One of the Caroline listeners to write in was Penelope Page Buster began a correspondence with her, and subsequently asked her to be a sub-editor. From then on she worked on every edition, and even moved from Skegness to Essex to be more closely involved, It was around this time that John Steven decided to close Radio Recovery. One evening whilst Buster was suffering one of his many spells of being laid up in bed, unable to walk because of a painful bleed into a knee joint, John came around and dismantled the studio and took away all of the equipment and the records - many of which were Buster's own. What happened to all the equipment would make a fascinating story in it self!! (Some of it is now at the bottom of the sea on the Mi Amigo! the RCA cartridge player/recorder later found it's way onto Radio Atlantis!) But that was the end of both Radio Recovery and Buster's friendship with John Steven.

Thus Buster was left with a magazine at the printers and nobody to collect it. Thus came a knock on the door from a local TV repairman by the name of Paul Southgate who'd heard the adverts on Caroline and, coming to do a job in Avondale Road decided to call in. When Buster told him his problem he immediately volunteered to collect the printing, and Buster thrust into his hands the £30 to pay for the printing.

£30 was a lot of money in those days - two or three weeks wages for most people. When Buster's aged mother heard he'd given the money vital to the continuation of his magazine to a complete stranger she gave him a very hard time, predicting he'd never see Paul or the magazine again! But of course, Paul not only brought the pages safely home, he set to and assembled the magazines - by now there were a thousand copies being printed of a sixteen page magazine, so the production was getting to be quite a mammoth task. Paul continued to organise the printing and assembling of Monitor to the end of the foolscap days, and became one of Buster's closest friends.