The inside story of Eamon Cooke, Ireland’s Jimmy Savile | The Sunday Times
Flor Lynch
[I know that we covered this story / podcast to some extent last week. This article adds some flesh to that.]
A new investigation delves into the past of the Radio Dublin owner, who used his larger-than-life personality to obscure his paedophilia for decades
Jimmy Savile, the broadcaster later revealed to be a sexual predator, was a regular visitor to Ireland from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Each year he travelled to Dublin to take part in a sponsored walk to raise funds for the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC). According to a new investigation, the notorious DJ would have encountered another paedophile at these charity events: Eamon Cooke, a man who pioneered pirate radio in Ireland and was convicted for sexually assaulting young girls.
In Pirate Predator, a podcast series by RTE Radio’s Documentary on One, Peter Mulryan, presenter and producer, spoke to witnesses who placed Savile and Cooke “in the same place at the same time”.
“On some CRC walks in the late 1970s, Radio Dublin supplied vehicles, the bandstand Savile would stand on, and the DJs that played the music,” Mulryan said.
“I have photographs of Savile on stage. Cooke kept to the sidelines, running transmitters and generators.”
A DJ who participated in the charity event told Mulryan how, at the end of the walk, Savile would sit in a caravan, to which “fans trekked to get his autograph”. Liam O’Brien, the Documentary on One series producer, added: “Cooke was in and out of that caravan as well. It was the perfect cover.”
In 2007, Cooke was found guilty on 42 charges of indecent assault and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in 2016 aged 79.
The producers of Pirate Predator believe Cooke’s catalogue of victims between the Sixties and the Noughties could number in the hundreds. “His criminal record kept building,” O’Brien said. “He was a danger to children until he was put in prison.”
As the operator of Radio Dublin, Cooke was a local hero in Seventies Ireland. The self-appointed godfather of Irish pirate radio, who also referred to himself as Captain Cooke, operated an illegal radio station from his home in Inchicore, and launched the careers of radio stars such as Marty Whelan and Dave Fanning. “There’s no indication either broadcaster knew anything about Cooke’s predatory behaviour,” O’Brien said.
Radio Dublin, which broadcast until 2002 and was one of the longest-running pirate stations in the world, was Cooke’s “magnet to lure children”, said Mulryan, who was a teenager when he first met Cooke in the Eighties for research for a book on pirate radio. “He used to do things like toy appeals, a Miss Radio Dublin event. There were ads: come and be a telephonist on Radio Dublin.”
While making the podcast, Mulryan spoke to many of Cooke’s victims, some of whom went on the record for the first time. “It wasn’t just physical abuse. It was the control, the manipulation and the terror Cooke exerted afterwards.”
The producers found anecdotal evidence of Cooke’s involvement in two paedophile rings in Dublin: one in the Sixties, in the Liberties area where Cooke operated an electrical shop; and another around Inchicore and Kilmainham.
Cooke, born in Glasnevin in 1936, had multiple convictions unrelated to sexual offences over a 51-year period. Pirate Predator follows his early brushes with the law, including stealing lead for scrap as a child; his prosecution aged 15 for bombing the O’Connell Monument at Glasnevin Cemetery; and being jailed in 1957 for firing six shots from a revolver at gardai in Bray, Co Wicklow.
In the Sixties, Cooke moved into a house on Sarsfield Road in Inchicore and operated a TV repair shop on Thomas Street in the Liberties. “We have people saying kids used to come to the shop, where Cooke groped them,” O’Brien said. “We set up an anonymous tip line and received what appears to be a witness to a rape or a serious sexual assault in the basement underneath his shop.”
Pirate Predator explores the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Cooke’s first wife, Helena, in 1965. “We’ve spoken to Helena’s nephew,” Mulryan said. “Half her family think he killed her [through electrocution].” The death was not considered suspicious at the time and was registered as ventricular fibrillation, a form of heart failure.
Despite his criminal record, Cooke appeared to have close relationships with some gardai. In the early Seventies, he listened into police frequencies on VHF radio and arrived at crime scenes in his Jaguar — behaviour that witnesses described as vigilantism. “There were six squad cars in southwest Dublin, Alpha 1 to 6,” Mulryan said. “Cooke got the name Alpha 7.”
Cooke started transmitting radio signals as a hobby in the late Sixties and took possession of the transmitter and frequency of Radio Dublin, operated by another broadcaster since 1966, through what the podcast producers describe as “nefarious means”.
Radio Dublin was a cultural phenomenon. Only one official station, Radio Eireann, operated in Ireland at the time and it did not play much pop music. Radio Dublin is thought to have been the first Irish radio station to conduct round-the-clock broadcasting. It transformed part-time hobbyists to full-time broadcasters.
Despite efforts from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs to close the station, it persisted with the support of the greater public. In January 1978, a rally consisting of “8,000 to 10,000 people”, according to the newsletter Sounds Alternative, took place in the city centre in support of Cooke and Radio Dublin.
Matt KavanaghCooke was an unusual folk hero, with his poor personal hygiene. “He was a scruffy character,” said Paul Matthews, who worked briefly as a DJ at the station. “The shirt and tie that he wore must have been on him for about at least three or four months. You went into the studio after him and you couldn’t even see the decks because of his cigarette smoke.”
Yet the popularity of Radio Dublin made him a local celebrity. “In 2026 we have some idea of fame,” O’Brien said. “If you become a TikTok or Instagram star, you might get free holidays and access to big events. You’re front and centre. It gives you power. Can you imagine what that was like in the 1970s? Cooke owned a radio station. He controlled who was on and off the air.”
Cooke’s first interaction with Savile is believed to be in 1978, when he conducted an on-air telephone interview with the English broadcaster in advance of a CRC charity walk. Pirate Predator features a DJ “who was there for [the interview with Savile] and can distinctly remember it”, Mulryan said. In later years, Savile visited Cooke’s home studio in Inchicore to publicise his event. “He and Cooke got to know each other then in 1979, 1980, 1981.”
The producers suspect Savile had victims in Ireland. “There have to be,” O’Brien said. “What was he doing here? Why was he hanging around with Cooke? You have these infamous paedophiles sharing the same space at the same time with children all around them. Take from that what you will.”
In 2013, a CRC spokesperson said it never received any allegations of inappropriate behaviour or abuse against Savile. The following year, the CRC said it was appalled by the contents of a report released by the NHS, the British health service, regarding the late broadcaster.
In Pirate Predator, James Dillon, a DJ and station manager at Radio Dublin, describes his decision to lead a staff walkout from the station in 1978 when he learnt of allegations that Cooke had molested a child. Cooke responded with a live on-air monologue protesting his innocence. “He did that to control the narrative,” Mulryan said.
Subsequently, Cooke does not appear to have been investigated over the alleged abuse. “Another victim is on record talking about the amount of times she went to the gardai. She said, ‘Eamon Cooke raped me.’ And nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened,” Mulryan added.
In February 1982, failure to hold Cooke to account allegedly reached the highest levels of government. Cooke claimed to have installed transmitting equipment for a pop-up station at the Fianna Fail headquarters during Charles Haughey’s re-election campaign. But in a news report in The Irish Press, a party spokesman denied the accusation. Cooke replied: “We ought to know it is there. We also supplied them with some of our disc jockeys who play music between the Fianna Fail advertisements.”
In 1984 Cooke was prosecuted for petrol-bombing a house on the South Circular Road in Dublin. He was also alleged to have sabotaged Sunshine Radio, a rival station.
The makers of Pirate Predator said, however, there was not enough evidence to connect Cooke with Philip Cairns, the 13-year-old school boy who went missing from Rathfarnham, Dublin, in 1986. “It’s a tabloid dream,” Mulryan said. “You’re tying up Ireland’s most famous missing persons case with one of Ireland’s most famous paedophiles, but there is little to support it outside conspiracy.”
Despite his eventual imprisonment in 2007, Cooke used nefarious means to avoid facing justice for decades. Witnesses in Pirate Predator talk about the DJ’s proximity to power, which gave him access and protection, and his willingness to intimidate or blackmail survivors who reported his crimes and anyone else who stood in his way.
“There are striking similarities with Jimmy Savile,” Mulryan said. “The modus operandi is always the same for these people. It’s about power, control, leverage and being a larger-than-life character, whether you are Jeffrey Epstein, Rolf Harris or Eamon Cooke.”
Pirate Predator by RTE Documentary on One is out now on podcast platforms. Anyone with information about Eamon Cooke can email docume...@rte.ie or report anonymously via rte.ie/piratepredator