Tony Blackburn celebrates Radio Caroline on BBC Radio 2

Radio Caroline first hit the airwaves on March 28, 1964 from a ship anchored off the coast of Felixstowe. 

Blackburn, 81, worked on the station, as well as Radio London, during the 1960s.

The 81-year-old took over Zoe Ball's breakfast show (Image: PA)

As part of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary, he temporarily took over Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 breakfast show and played Caroline by The Fortunes – which he used to play as a DJ on Radio Caroline.

He said: “The pirates are back. Zoe Ball has been locked out of the studio. I’m here. Anarchy once again.

“We are pirates. We’re pirate Radio 2 and here we go.

READ MORE: Radio Caroline presenter will open Felixstowe museum

“For the next hour, I’m gonna play you proper music.”

Later on, Blackburn said that he and fellow radio presenter Johnnie Walker had been “thinking about” hijacking the radio station for a while.

“Unfortunately, Johnnie Walker has overslept and he’s having a lie-in, but it’s one of those things”, he said.

Radio Caroline has been running for 60 years (Image: Newsquest)

Ball soon returned to the show, who joked she had been freed from the cupboard she was locked in.

“I’m loving this pirate takeover”, she said.

“Congratulations, it’s 60 years.”

Blackburn said: “I started on Radio Caroline in July actually, 1964.”

“I remember seeing the pirate ship, the Mi Amigo, for the very first time”, he said.

“We went out from Harwich, we sailed over from Harwich and it was quite a choppy day and I saw this little pirate ship giving the government so much trouble and I thought ‘wow, that’s great’.”

He added: “Everybody remembers Radio Caroline, I particularly loved ‘Big L’ Radio London and that was a bigger ship and we had our own cabins and everything.

Radio Caroline's vessel, named MV Caroline, in the 1980s (Image: Newsquest)

“But we all got on well out there. It was three years, I just thought it was wonderful.”

Pirate radio stations, which were not licenced and did not observe copyright law, rose to prominence at a time when attitudes towards music were starting to change.

In August 1967, a new Act of Parliament called the Marine, & Broadcasting (Offences) Act came in to effect in a bid to silence these offshore radio stations.

In the aftermath of the Act's introduction, Blackburn became the first DJ on BBC Radio 1 when it was launched in September 1967.

Radio Caroline continues to run to this day – albeit legally – and has a licence from regulator Ofcom to broadcast across Suffolk and north Essex, playing music from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Its name was taken from Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former US president John F. Kennedy.