A different kind of Tom Roche

[Tom Roche]

At 10:46 AM +0000 6/12/05, peel@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>A different kind of Ravenscroft    Just listening to an old Peel show (dated
>25.04.2001) and 20 mins in, JP reads out an e-mail from Mike F from Dallas
>Texas asking if the Tom Roche in Atlanta that he mentions, the same Tom
>Roche who had a radio programme on WOWD in Tallahassee. To this JP answered
>that he didn't think so, but he'd ask him when he came over in  the summer.
>Well Tom, was it you?



Geez guys there is no hiding from you is there? First you blow my 
cover from when I was a UK border customs agent. Yes, all those years 
of claiming I grew up in Tampa Florida, claiming to have bought a 
white label promo of Trout Mast Replica nobody wanted for $4 when I 
was 16, now worth a fortune, lies, all lies. Well the fortune part 
isn't a lie, but obviously I am now actually 86 years old and look 
back on stopping Don Van Vliet at the border as my proudest 
achievement in life.

The WOWD-FM thing, that was a station known as D-103, that is all 
part of my phony back-story I made up to hide my customs agent 
affiliation. I made up this story about growing restless in Tampa, 
and moving 250 miles to north Florida to go to Florida State 
University, where my mom had gone in 1943. Er, um, she didn't really 
go, I made that up. They said that the University Of Florida in 
Gainesville was the party school, go there, I said well I dunno. The 
said that FSU, being a former all women's college, had 4 stunning 
women for every guy, go there. I said well I dunno. Then they said 
FSU had a 50,000 watt campus radio station, covered much of north 
Florida, and I said sold, see ya there.

Well they had no room when I got there (in this part of this big lie 
story) so they supposedly set me across town to the black collage, 
FAMU, and they had a 100 watt station WAMF and I went on there, was 
the only white guy on the air there. Then later I got on the big 
station, WFSU, so I was on two stations. Then a guy at WOWD heard me 
and said you sound good, so he hired me to actually do radio on 
weekends for money. I even devised this huge phony web site of the 
guy who supposedly hired me, all lies. 
http://www.performancevistasinc.com/Pelt.html

This big lie gets more complicated with the afternoon I supposedly 
was on the WFSU station and I played "Working Class Hero" and um 
sorta forgot to silence a few words and got kicked off. And the black 
jazz/reggae/soul station was tying up too much of my school time, or 
was it my sex life, probably the latter (my God I seem to recall I 
thought it was gonna fall off) so I supposedly quit that too.

The WOWD station was pure commercial "rrrrrock" as Peel would say, 
and of course I knew better and kept breaking format for this new 
Pretenders record and this new Costello guy- there is only so much 
Ted Nugent and Marshall Tucker Band one can take - and they would 
soon shit-can me. Such a tired old DJ story, so easy to make it all 
up.

There was actually a Mike F at the WFSU station who lives in Atlanta 
now somewhere, but he was kinda square then but I might have to take 
the time to re-evaluate my opinion of him. After all, at The Her 
Majesty's Customs Agent's Retirement Home here in Weston-super-Mare 
overlooking the donkey rides I have plenty of time on my hands before 
I croak, which won't be too long from now.


tr