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When Irish eyes sent the wrong signal to MI5
Richard Norton-Taylor

Friday January 21, 2000

Songs including We'll Meet Again, Windy Night and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling played on an Irish radio station during the second world war aroused the suspicion of security services and were scanned to see if they were hidden messages to hostile agents, according to intelligence reports released yesterday.

Song requests played on a small station in Athlone, mid-Ireland, were scrutinised after the BBC monitoring service alerted the intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6.

In February 1941, the BBC reported the song When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, which was played for "grateful patients" in an Exeter hospital. The BBC left it to the security and intelligence agencies services to judge whether it was a coded message.

"Let us know if you wish to continue these," asked a puzzled BBC official who noted that the Athlone station had just played So I Pulled Myself Together, sung by Arthur Askey. More suspicious was the song, I Saw Three Ships A-Sailing.

MI5 was told there had been an SOS message for a Christy Hogan of Sparkbrook, Birmingham, who was asked to call at Richmond villas, Dublin, where his mother was ill. The implication was that it was a secret message.

"You may also be interested to hear that during a group of songs ... a tune, Moonshine, was broadcast 'for a listener in Whitehall'," added the BBC official. The suggestion was that it could be another coded message.

He carefully noted that another tune, Serenade in the Night, was described by the Athlone broadcaster as requested by "a pen pal in Roscommon to a pen pal in Nottingham, England".

The BBC monitor noted: "This is probably a perfectly innocent message but I thought you ought to know about it."

Edward Lustgarten, who became a well-known BBC announcer, told MI5 that his attention had been attracted by other songs - Stars all over the Sky, for instance - and even carols, including the First Noel.

The BBC described "an extraordinary episode" when on the same wavelength the song A Wild Irish Boy was interrupted by an announcer saying "Just a minute, here is a short number which is also topical, Floating Sea Mines". Suspicions were further aroused when the local orchestra asked to play it could not remember the tune.

There was alarm when the Irish station played what was described as a "German foxtrot" .

But by May 1941, the security services seemed to have finally lost interest. A memo notes: "There does not seem to be any significance in the titles heard so I would ask you so far as we are concerned not to continue to report song titles."