The true story of Wonderful Radio London (1964-1967) and the attempt to revive that station under the name of Wonderful Radio London International (1980-1985), originated with Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas. It has never been revealed before now.

This explanation will also reveal exactly how Radio London emerged from Gordon McLendon's KLIF top 40 radio station on Jackson Street in Dallas. That is not the same location that almost all of the KLIF photographs show, which is the famous 'triangle building on Commerce Street in Dallas. Nor is the iconic Lp called Cruisin' that is supposed to be an aircheck of how KLIF sounded in 1962, a genuine representation. It is a studio receation some four years after the event.

There have been many publications as well as video and audio recordings which have all claimed to be the true story about Radio London, but they are mostly make-believe and self-promoting claims of exaggeration by various individuals. The exception is a book published by a one-time associate of this site. He is the now deceased Christopher Gaydon who called himself 'Chris Elliot'. He had access to some of Don Pierson's archives, after receiving them on loan from Mervyn Hagger. Why and how that happened will be explained in due course.

Elliot teamed up with a fraudster named Ray Anderson, and in 1997 the two of them passed off a work claiming to be the real story. They neither had access to all of the key documents, nor a comprehension of what the true story is.

Because the distortions, lies, and theft of copyright work began during the second phase (after 1980) of Radio London as WRLI, that is where this story begins to establish its documentation of authenticity. We will therefore work back in time in the telling of this story.

Among the many persons who have passed-off their own writings as an authentic representation of the true story, one person stands out. Her name is Mary Payne. It was Mary Payne and her husband who combined their combined activities under the incorporated name of a British company which was registered as Radio London Limited. But the Paynes were not its original incorporators.

[LEFT] Chris and Mary Payne with their logo.

The Paynes claim that "We launched the Radio London website back in 1999."  They took over a previously Incorporated company called 'Radio London Ltd' on March 12, 2001. This date is several years after 1997 when Elliott and Anderson first published their book which influenced Mary Payne. But that book contained work stolen from Mervyn Hagger.

In taking over Radio London Ltd., Mary Payne and husband began to register a variety of trademark classifications. But her company was challenged by lawyers representing the British Broadcasting Corporation. That is when she lost the right to link her company to some of her trademark claims.

The UK Companies House web site now says that the Nature of her Business is "Television programming and broadcasting activities and Specialised design activities."  Mary Payne admits on her own web site that she originally new nothing about Radio London that was created in 1964 by Don Pierson. Her indoctrination took place in 1997 when she read the Elliot-Anderson book. Because their book relegated Don Pierson to an 'also-helped' character, she treated the legacy of Don Pierson in the same way.

The reason for bringing this work Online at this time and soon in print, is because of the discovery that Mary Payne has now taken the entire work of Mervyn Hagger and posted it out-of-context, on her own web site. This copyright theft does not stop, and therefore it must be exposed for what it is, and that is taking the work of other people without permission to satisfy monetary greed. It is not a public service, but a public disservice.

The three page feature being referred to has been retitled by Mary Payne as 'A 1980 feature from Irving, Texas, about how Don Pierson turned Big D into Big L'.

Even her title is wrong.

That article was both written by Mervyn Hagger who also designed the pre-press layout. All of this took place in Arlington, Texas on the occasion of the second issue of a franchised magazine that was published in the city of Irving as the second franchised edition. The first was published simultaneously in the city of Arlington, Texas.

How do I know all this? Well, I was employed as the Editor of this publication at its corporate office complex in Arlington. I was there!

The Chairman of the publishing corporation was Don Pierson, and the article that Mary Payne stole, was written by Mervyn Hagger with the help of Don Pierson. Because Mervyn Hagger was still a British citizen, he wanted to keep his own identity secret and so he used the pen name of Conrad Westinghouse. He chose that name because Conrad Hilton (of hotel fame), was born in a tiny city (a term corresponding to community, or even a village in England), that was next door to Eastland in West Texas. Westinghouse was chosen because George Westinghouse was one of America's broadcasting pioneers.

At the time of publication, the Radio London Story by Mervyn Hagger was primarily seen by readers in Texas. When franchise advertising expanded beyond Texas, samles of that edition were given to potential franchisees. It is not known whether any copies reached the British Isles.

In 2009, Mary Payne published another deceitful and totally dishonest version of the Radio London Story.

This time it was writtten as an autobiography by Ben Toney.

In his screed, Toney lied about his relationship with Mervyn Hagger, but on this site, we will publish Ben Toney's own business card proving that what he wrote was just another lie. We will also draw attention to the Online recording of Ben Toney in his own words. They also discredit what he later wrote and sent to Mary Payne for publication as his autobiography.

It is not as though Mary Payne does not know any of this.

She does.

However, Mary Payne has repeatedly refused to correct her mistakes, and she continues to pass-off her blatant lies as truth, even though she knows that they are untrue. So now its time to expose the lies and deceit of Mary Payne.

Her company called Radio London Ltd was originally registered by John Stephen Platt and his wife on March 8, 2001. They issued one share which was valued by them at £1. On June 18, 2002, their company filed a return showing no income and no expenditure.

On June 28, 2008, the Platts resigned and the Paynes took over, and then moved the address of the company to their home.

As of July 1, 2002, the value of the company was still £1.

On February 24, 2004, Chris Payne filed new Articles of Association in which the number of £1 shares was increased from 1 to 1,000. Now their company was self-appraised by them to be worth £1,000 in share value.

On the March 31, 2004, Chris Payne claimed that the company had a net book value of £384, unchanged from the previous year. On March 12, 2005, the Paynes moved both their residence and registered company address to the same new address. On March 31, 2006, the Paynes claimed that the net book value of their company was now £4,893. On March 31, 2008, the Paynes claimed that the net book value of their company was £4,628. On March 31, 2009, the Paynes claimed that the net book value of their company was £1,797. On March 31, 2020, the Paynes claimed that the net book value of their company was £1,249. On March 31, 2015, the Paynes claimed that the net book value of their company was £1,055.

On March 31, 2022, the Paynes listed the current company assets at £945, and their current company liabilities at £99,749. On that same date, which (as of the date of this writing), is the last date that a full report was filed with Companies House, the Paynes listed their company assets at £2,000. Their company liabilities were listed as £102,936, and the total indebtedness of the company was listed at £101,442. They did not list a net book value as in previous filings.

Clearly, Radio London Ltd is not how Gordon McLendon once described his Swedish offshore radio investment. McLendon wrote that it was a "Going Jenny." If anything, Radio London Ltd in 2024 is almost a dead duck. When the BBC called their bluff, the Paynes were forced to publish this notice on their web site:

"In February 2014, our company received legal notification that the BBC was challenging all our trade marks in the UK; the words "Radio London", the rl logo and the combined rl logo with the words "Radio London" across it. At the same time, the BBC had applied to register the trade mark "BBC Radio London", so clearly this new registration was likely to conflict with our existing ones.

After our suffering an extremely stressful year, a Hearing between both parties was held at the IPO (Intellectual Property Office) in February 2015. At the end of March 2015, the Hearing Officer issued a decision on the case and held that for certain of the goods/services covered by our trade marks, Radio London Ltd had not clocked-up what was regarded as sufficient use. The IPO therefore revoked, or restricted our UK trade mark registrations."

However, the original design of the 'rl' logo as used by Radlon (Sales) Ltd in 1964, is not the modified version that was claimed by the Paynes. The version used by Radlon (Sales) was a logo that appears to have been a modified version of the Litton Industries Inc. registered trade mark which over time was allowed to lapse into disuse. That logo is shown shown to the right of this text.

The logo shown to the left, is on the first advertising rate card issued by Radlon (Sales) Limited in 1964, and it claims to represent advertising sales for the offshore Radio London. But that station was deemed to be a 'pirate' by the UK government and so it was never registered as a trading company. In fact, the British Broadcasting Corporation had used that name before World War II.

Litton Industries used the same kind of type font for its 'r', but it placed its 'i' underneath the 'r' instead of alongside it like Radlon (Sales) Ltd. The Radio London version used a much skinnier font from the one used by Litton, and the truncated version used by the Paynes.

The Paynes admit that they got their misinformation about Don Pierson and 'Wonderful Radio London' from Elliot and Ben Toney, whose autobiography they published. They also took on the liabiliaty of publishing it. In fact, Mary Payne admits as much on her web site. But does the account by Ben Toney differ from the real story about the original Radio London and its latter-day version? The answer is, yes, it does, and significantly so on both accounts.

First of all the second phase of Wonderful Radio London began long before Elliot and the Paynes began their own fraudulentt impersonations, because it began around 1979 with the arrival of Mervyn Hagger in Eastland, Texas. That is where he met Don Pierson for the first time. However, Mervyn Hagger had first attempted to make contact with Don Pierson by letter. It was written on August 16, 1967 and mailed from Birmingham, England. On Sunday, May 22, 1983, Mervyn Hagger found that letter in one of the cardboard boxes containing the legal and company archives of Don Pierson in Eastland, Texas.

 When Mervyn Hagger wrote that letter, he was botth an accredited member of the National Union of Journalists, and an associate member of the Foreign Press Association as a published feature writer for British newspapers and a company newspaper.

This is where, when and how the foundation for the trio of Mervyn Hagger, Genie Baskir and Dr Eric Gilder was built and which enabled them to met for the first time. That initial joint meeting began what has now become an investigation that has lasted for decades to become the foundation for this explanaion about the real story behind not just offshore broadcasting, but the origins of broadcasting itself. It is also the story of how KLIF in Dallas morphed into Radio London, and then how the British Broadcasting Corporation attempted to morph it into their own copycat station called 'BBC Radio One'.