John Peel : Dud or Dad?

Now, I may have outgrown the kind of tuneless indie thrash that I then thought was going to bring down Thatcher but for the above reason alone I am eternally thankful to the old duffer. Now where did I leave that Bogshed LP...

He's not strong on tunes but there's the rest of the schedule for that, really. "Home Truths" is some way beyond awful, though.

As Mr Carsmile suggests there is also something great about a sixtysomething man on national radio playing obscure records at the wrong speed.

I don't think Peel would be that offended by what you say, Johnathan. Anything you might say pales beneath that ridiculous, hateful attack on him by Julie Burchill a couple of years ago.

The Guardian

There are two sorts of sacred cows, just like there's a Whopper and a filet mignon. The first sort of cow is one that we know is sacred, but we're - titter, snigger - covertly encouraged to attack it, both for pleasure and profit. That would be the Queen and Cliff Richard. The second would be the Queen Mother and John Peel. Show me a filet mignon and I become a mad cow. John Peel has become 'our' - and, by that, I mean people who consider themselves enlightened and unburdened by tradition - Queen Mother. He needs taking out; if only in a caring way, for his own good. He is in danger of reaching hands- off, Help The Aged status: 60 years old, and he's still got all his own teeth, sorry, all his own Fall records! I've always loathed John Peel. It started in the Sixties when I was a child, still staggering under the first blow of benediction by black music. All day long on Radio 1 - most of all, on Tony Blackburn's show - you could hear great creamy earfuls of it: Motown by the mile, Philly by the furlong. But at night Radio 1 became a white desert. It became 'intelligent'. That is, it became male, hippy and smelly - it became John Peel.

I hated him in the Seventies, too, because he liked punk, long after punk - the whitest, malest, most asexual music ever - should have been left to die an unnatural death. I'd been a punk, and knew that the whole thing was, frankly, shit in safety pins. We came to bury the music industry; we ended up giving it one almighty shot in the arm.

In the Eighties, someone gave me as a kitsch gift a Sixties pop annual. I'll never forget John Peel in it, talking about his father's absence during his infancy: 'He was off playing soldiers.' Reader, this man was fighting in the second world war.

What did YOU do in the war, Daddy? Well, John Peel caught VD, and banged on about it. Until recently, Peel banged on a lot about sex. Like many an ugly Englishman, he went to America, where that nation's young women found a Limey accent so beguiling that they barely looked at the face it came out of: 'All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I was only too happy to do,' Peel told the Guardian in 1975. 'Girls,' he said to the Sunday Correspondent in 1989, 'used to queue up outside . . . oral sex they were particularly keen on, I remember . . . one of my regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older.'

This was the Sixties. Fleeing America after the authorities quite rightly objected to him having sex with young teenage girls, Peel was joined by his wife, Shirley, a Texan girl, who was 15 when he married her. Talking to the Correspondent about this young woman, now dead by her own hand, Peel seems strangely censorious: 'She fell in with some extremely dodgy people . . . she married three more times after me, and I was the only husband by whom she didn't have a child.

All the children were in care. She did some terrible things, you know. She didn't deserve to die, though.' Somebody give that man a medal! Scratch a hippie and find a sexist - well into the Seventies, Peel was drooling on about 'schoolgirls', in print and on air, where his Schoolgirl Of The Year competition was quietly laid to rest during punk's tenure. I always thought the alleged Sexual Revolution of the Sixties was not a bid to advance women's rights, but rather to block them, to turn back the clock and push the brave new young working woman back to being barefoot and pregnant. Even the appearance approved for hippie women - long skirts, long hair - spoke of an earlier era, before girls raised their skirts and bobbed their hair and went out to earn a living.

Knowing of Peel's rather sticky track record on matters sexual, it seems both wildly inappropriate and somehow totally fitting that his latest venture is the radio critic's favourite Radio 4 programme, Saturday morning's Home Truths, which, as its name implies, is a deeply reactionary idea masquerading as a droll, down-to-earth sideswipe. Home Truths concerns itself with family matters, both bitter and sweet. These may be as unimportant as the reluctance of teenagers to tidy their rooms or as serious as the alleged False Memory Syndrome, but they are linked by one overriding belief: that after all politics, after all ideas, there is the Family. And that the Family, alone of all institutions, is as natural as breathing.

This is, of course, untrue; the Family is a construct like any other, one that has been propped up by a million years of hellfire warnings ('Marry or burn' - so-called 'Saint' Paul) and that, the moment the pulpit-bullying ceased, broke down with amazing swiftness.

Everyone's got a right to get old and fat - hell, it's practically my raison d'etre - but I find it filthily objectionable for someone who has grown rich and respected for preaching the Sixties mantra, 'If it feels good, do it!', suddenly to come over so cosy and domestic that it would have Oxo Katie reaching for an icepick.

Peel, being middle class, managed to survive the Sixties, and then thrive in the decades that followed. But for the young working class, the road of excess led to madness, alienation and incarceration; and for the girls who got hip to the Sixties slogans about sexual generosity, a joyless shag led to nothing but a council flat and the end of youth before they were entitled to vote. I don't blame Peel for changing his mind. But I do blame him for rubbing the nation's collective nose in the fact that the well-connected can walk on the wild side and return to the fold, whereas the working class need only stray once off the straight and narrow to be trapped in a cul-de-sac of sorrow.

A public schoolboy who calls his children after footballers, a lover of World Music who happily took the Order of the British Empire, a landowner who does commercials for toilet paper and Playstations and yet calls himself a Bennite, a past 'abuser' of children who preaches Family Values in excelsis: it is not, as his fans like to say, a wonder that Radio 1 has not sacked him in 30 years. No, in all his patronising, phoney, hypocritical glory, he is Radio 1. Lord Reith would be proud.

A public schoolboy who calls his children after footballers, a lover of World Music who happily took the OBE, a landowner who does commercials for toilet paper and Playstations and yet calls himself a Bennite, a past "abuser" of children who preaches family values in excelsis: it is not, as his fans like to say, a wonder that Radio 1 has not sacked him in 30 years. No, in all his patronising, phoney, hypocritical glory, he is Radio 1. Lord Reith would be proud.

On a total tangent - "smug" is another one of those words which could do with firming up a bit.

But the central point of the piece is flawed, and the concluding string of insults is totally unjustified; OK so the honours system has its roots in an establishment which patronised "the colonials" in the countries from which so-called "World Music" often comes, but does that really mean that anyone who accepts an OBE is buying into the imperialist stuff that went on 100 years ago? And where is the law which says that anyone whose parents paid for their education can only like rugby and cricket? I also don't remember Peel declaring himself a Bennite. Another in the long line of pathetically insecure British journalists who bury some good points amid ridiculous sexual insults and Class War ranting.

"Actually Robin the 'unquestioned' position of JP is what pisses me off most, if anything, about him."

Blame the sentimentalist in me. I like the idea that I've met old hippies who listened to the Top Gear show circa 1968 and their children are Peel listeners now. However I'll appreciate that says more about my inbuilt desire for some kind of "permanence" than it does about my feelings on Peel himself.

"I think it's time his show was axed."

Wouldn't happen unless he decides it himself. Both Bannister and Parfitt have made it clear that Peel is the only person at R1 with a job for life.

There are far worse targets than Peel, of course. In terms of reinforcing indiekid narrow-mindedness, you'd have to point the finger straight at Lamacq, or maybe at Janice Long in the 80s (now an overnight R2 hand, through some long and convoluted chain of events).

"And it wouldn't surprise me if he is gone in a couple of years."

He wouldn't be axed, but I think he could surprise people by leaving very suddenly, perhaps at a specific R1 anniversary. It would be his style to go quietly; he'd probably announce it about two weeks before and then just go. You wouldn't have rumours about it beforehand.

Johnathan: I find Peel's ubiquity in voiceovers mildly irritating, but I simply don't watch the programmes he narrates (out of choice because I'm usually bored by their content, not out of dislike for his voice). It is true that the music Peel plays has generally seemed threatening to the establishment, which is why he had to wait until 1998 for the OBE (the 1950s-bound Tories would *never* have honoured him; Labour on the other hand are dominated by old hippies who grew up with Top Gear and now listen to Home Truths) but I have no problem with his being on Radio 4 *and* still playing the music he does. What's wrong with people having a wide range of interests and working in a wide range of fields?

dud or dad..who f****** cares.

Ha, this is barking mad: John Peel is going on his holidays soon and Rod Stewart will be a guest presenter ! why? also the wonderful and fun Siouxsie Sioux will also be presenting.

Two weeks of guest presenters coming soon including Rod Stewart and Siouxsie Sioux - send in your questions now!

More info @ Radio 1 website:

From October 19th a succession of music savvy celebs will be piloting the Peel studio. The full exciting line up will be unveiled soon and the first names we can reveal are Rod Stewart and Siouxsie Sioux.

Peel and Rod were mates. His history does go back beyond 1977, you know.

I mean, who do you think should be depping for him on his show? Annie? Big and Rich?

"blue paper AL-KAL-I/red paper A-CIEED!" as my old chemistry teacher used to hammer into our heads (not necessarily metaphorically)

"TRYYYYYY THIS ONE!" was his catchphrase whenever it was time to do an experiment (or, as he used to call it, "ex-purr-u-munt").

"Rrrrright, claaaaass, wrrrrite this dowwwwn...Monty Python is skiing down the Matterhorn while eating ticker tape for lunch..."

"Sir when do we get to do the oil drop test?"

(I'm not sure that we ever did)

my predictions:

david gedge
dave clarke
mark e smith
pj harvey

Oops wrong thread.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19933274

The BBC may re-consider naming part of its London headquarters after the late John Peel, following allegations he had an affair with a 15-year-old.

According to the Daily Mail, the former BBC DJ met teenager Jane Nevin in 1969.

She told the paper they had an affair, during which she became pregnant.

A BBC spokesman said: "Clearly, in the event of proven allegations of sexual abuse the BBC would re-consider its decision on the naming of part of our new building."

The BBC announced in March this year that it was re-naming part of BBC Broadcasting House after the late Radio 1 DJ.

Then-Director General Mark Thompson announced the Egton Wing, part of its central London headquarters, would be re-named the Peel Wing.

The site is the former home of Radio 1, where Peel broadcast for much of his career.

Speaking at the time, Mr Thompson said it was "a fitting tribute to a man who personified so much of what the BBC stands for".

Peel began working for a radio station in Dallas in the 1960s, followed by a spell on pirate station Radio London, before moving to Radio 1 in 1967.

In addition to his Radio 1 show, he could also be heard on the BBC's World Service, Radio 4's Home Truths and Top Of The Pops.

A champion of new music, he helped launch the career of acts from David Bowie, through to Joy Division and the White Stripes.

He was appointed OBE in 1998 and earned a place in the Radio Academy Hall of Fame.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2216453/John-Peel-got-pregnant-I-15-Woman-claims-month-affair-DJ.html

Well as everyone knows he married his first wife when she was 15 and he was 25. He's been dead for a decade. Blah blah blah. Fuck off Britain.

The rumours had been around for years too. Huge cover up at the BBC took place it seems. Other celebs are being implicated and of course gary glitter appears to have been involved too.

im just waiting for catholic priests to be involved for the full set

actually who ran that jersey care home?

who is back row second on left and back row far right in that picture?

Paul Burnett and Tom Browne

first one sounds vaguely familier (american guy?), never even heard of tom browne

is that diddy hamilton top left?

Yes, instantly recognisable by a) diminutive size, b) stupid grin, c) t-shirt with 'amusing' slogan

I can't imagine why Sandusky wasn't just strangled by someone. Spares others decades of pain if it was done early enough AND the solution would be akin to Murder on the Orient Express.

no no no no please do not turn that into an ilx meme

I'm sorry officer, but 'I can't imagine why British pizza wasn't just strangled by someone. Spares others decades of pain if it was done early enough AND the solution would be akin to Murder on the NEWSIEWESIES.' is the name of my dog.

who is the guy in the middle at the back ?

i know of a statue going cheap if they want to replace the paterno one with something different?

xp Paul Gambaccini - hard to recognise with the beard.

who is the "4th star" ? http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/276633/NEW-SAVILE-SEX-RING-STAR/

just the two results for "john peeldophile"

sex ring eh, i guess jimmy and grimes do have similar haircuts.

A friend of mine was a volunteer at a charity run in Leeds 20 years ago. She was pouring out the orange juice for the runners and Savile was so despised by the other volunteers that one of them spiked his orange with LSD! I have mixed feelings about Peel. It is so much easier to accept that a horrible bell end like Savile was a monster than a guy who used to play lots of amazing music during my formative years. I am not trying to be light on Peel. A lot my family suffered abuse in Dublin at the hands of The Christian Brothers and am well aware of the horrific damage child abuse causes. I just don't think Peel is in the same category as Savile even though he should still have technically been put on the sex offenders register.

who knows what else will come out

there have been other savile rumours circulating for years that are in another league of shocking. i was inclined to believe they were just an urban myth but i don't think anything would surprise me now.

Around West Yorkshire Savile rumours were rife for years. I think a lot of them came from staff at St Jimmies.

stirmonster talking about the irvine welsh book type stuff

no one is comparing peel to savile but it appears he did admit what he did and it was against the law. You just wonder how many tv/pop stars/djs were guilty of the same thing and how much will come out. It definitely was seen as part of the culture at the time.

i believe mr. welsh based that character on the rumours. i don't think we'll ever know if that's true as it's probably too much for the general public to stomach.

well even when i was reading that book when it came out the rumours were that it was who it was about. tbf even if you hadn't heard the rumours you couldn't fail to make the connection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JPTyTX0amM&feature=share

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/irvine_welsh_on_jimmy_savile_was_savile_a_necrophiliac_then_or_what

maybe someone mistook intercourse w/ comatose patient for necrophilia?

its a common mistake

dead men tell tale no tales.

Sick puppies ! I really love Sadowitz, now there is a man from entertainment who you would trust around your kids! "Fuck OFF!".

no one is comparing peel to savile but it appears he did admit what he did and it was against the law.

Didn't stop him, in his weekly column in Sounds in the early 70s, going on endlessly about the erotic appeal of schoolgirls etc, which he carried on even after the punk era before he realised he couldn't get away with it anymore

well fantasy is one thing and action another... I think by that point he was probably getting away from that sort of thing - he married Sheila in 74 i think. not that speculation really proves anything either way.

But I think the main thing here is that he basically admitted to this stuff and his guilt over it many years ago now, and I think it's only being bought up by the (mainly) right wing press now as another thing to batter the BBC with. Peel's past actions are hugely and obviously different from the systematic decades of obvious abuse from people like Saville.

Times were definitely different then and despite that Peel has made public apology for the things he used to do - unlike just about every huge rock star from the 70s and 80s who probably did the same or worse. I'm not at all trying to excuse the behaviour at any level, which even if consented to was a clear case of an unhealthy abuse of position, but if everyone was being exposed as Peel currently is for their relationships with girls as young as 13 or 14, we wouldn't be able to listen to Zeppelin or Hendrix or Bowie or the Stones, or indeed just about anyone. Were there actually any famous rock groupies over 16?!

The reason Peel is being dragged into this is nothing to do with a desire to expose crime or illegality or help the victims, and everything about the right trying to hurt the beeb. It's also a shame to see some indie publications quoting verbatim from the Daily Mail(!) in trying to 'report' this 'new' expose. Just another case of anything to get hits most of the time, which is pretty depressing.

*awaits barrage of abuse*

no abuse here. otm imo.

the daily (hate) mail is beyond loathsome.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213621/Claire-McAlpine-A-15-year-old-killed-leaving-diary-naming-DJs-abusers-Disturbing-questions-John-Peel-So-starts-WERE-involved.html

for example

c+p or summary? don't want to give them the clicks

Special report: A 15-year-old who killed herself after leaving a diary naming DJs as abusers. Disturbing questions about John Peel. So how many stars WERE involved?
Top Of The Pops dancer Claire McAlpine was 15 when she died of an overdose in her family home
She left behind a diary naming many famous showbusiness personalities who she claims 'used' her
The allegations were dismissed both within and outside the BBC and Jimmy Savile publicly denied having known her

Back in the Seventies, when Jimmy Savile was at the height of his fame, he was interviewed by a newspaper about the death of a teenage girl.
The youngster was Claire McAlpine. She was just 15 years old and had been a regular dancer in the audience of Top Of The Pops.
On the morning of March 29, 1971, Claire, a former convent school pupil, was found lying on the floor of her bedroom at home in Watford, Hertfordshire, by her distraught mother. She had taken a fatal overdose.

Near her body was a bottle of tablets and her red diary. ‘Don’t laugh at me for being dramatic, but I just can’t take it any more,’ Claire wrote.
It was her last heartbreaking entry to her parents before she killed herself.

On the preceding pages, she had named a string of radio disc jockeys — and other showbusiness personalities, all household names — who, she claimed, had ‘used’ her.

One of the DJs, she said, had taken her to his house for the night and given her a pill which made her feel like she was ‘floating on a cloud’. Another had also invited her back to his ‘sumptuously furnished’ residence.

Savile, then in his 40s, who presented Top Of The Pops, was asked during the interview if he knew or remembered Claire from the show.
‘I studied a photograph of Claire very closely,’ he replied. ‘I cannot recollect ever seeing the girl in my life. They say she came from Watford. I don’t know anyone who lives in Watford.’

The inquest into Claire’s death was held shortly after the article appeared. The coroner ruled that Claire committed suicide after deciding her ‘day-dreams’ of becoming a pop star would never come true.

Claire’s diary was scrutinised by Scotland Yard, but no action was taken against the DJs, who, she alleged, had ‘used’ her for their own sexual gratification.

They were never even questioned, let alone identified. ‘It would be ridiculous to connect anyone or anything mentioned in her diary with reality,’ a police spokesman said at the time.

Or, to put another way, Claire was a portrayed as a troubled fantasist. Her death, however tragic, had nothing to do with a sex scandal involving the showbusiness establishment.

Does anyone reading her story for the first time today really believe that now?
Claire’s family and friends never doubted her.

And someone who knew Claire back then contacted the Mail this week to support the accusations contained in her diary.

The allegations made — and casually dismissed both within and outside the BBC — by Claire McAlpine all those years ago can point only to one dreadful conclusion: that far from being alone, the predatory behaviour displayed by Jimmy Savile, national icon and charity fundraiser, was common among many big showbusiness names of the time.

...Yet no one epitomised this laissez-faire sexual morality, which, in one way or another, allowed Jimmy Savile’s vile activities to continue for so long, than the late, saintly John Peel.

Peel, awarded the OBE in 1998, is perhaps best remembered for his Saturday morning programme Home Truths on Radio 4 in which he talked about family life to Middle England.

But as a young man, he worked in Texas as a local radio station DJ and self-appointed ‘Beatles expert’.

When he was older, he recalled some of the ‘perks’ of the job in several newspaper interviews in the Seventies and Eighties.
Girls, some as young as 13, he said, used to queue up outside his studio to offer him sexual favours. ‘Well, of course, I didn’t ask for ID,’ he said.
‘All they wanted me to do was to abuse them sexually which, of course I was only too happy to do.

‘It was the glamour of the job?.?.?.?but frustratingly, American girls of that period — as they do now, actually — had this strange notion of virginity as a tangible thing which you surrendered to your husband on your wedding night. ‘So they would do anything but s*** you. They’d give you a b*** *** before they’d s*** you.’

Even now, and allowing for Peel’s famously sardonic humour, it is troubling that those words came from Radio 4’s cuddly champion of middle-class values. One of the girls who queued up outside his studio was a girl called Shirley Anne Milburn. She and Peel were married in Texas on September 29, 1965.

Peel was 26 years old. Shirley Anne was just 15.

‘She lied about her age and so did her family,’ he would later declare.

Peel brought his wife to London two years later, but the marriage began to founder almost immediately as his star soared on Radio 1. They were divorced in 1973. Some years later, after returning to the U.S., she committed suicide.

By then, Peel — who married his second wife, Sheila, in 1974, and with whom he had four children — had become a pillar of the community in the village of Great Finborough, Suffolk.

Nevertheless, the DJ — who died in 2004 — kept up a running gag in his column in Sounds (a rock music weekly) in the mid-Seventies about how he preferred the company of fans when they were dressed as schoolgirls.

The column was often illustrated with photos of Peel posing with young girls dressed St Trinian’s-style in short gym skirts, stockings and suspenders. For one series of pictures, he dressed in a schoolgirl uniform himself.

Alan Lewis, a one-time editor of Sounds, says Peel’s regular references to schoolgirls were ‘half joking, half serious’. But he admits: ‘We really did go quite far on occasion.’

Unbelievably, Peel also ran a Schoolgirl of the Year competition on his Radio 1 show.

So, on the one hand, you have John Peel, and his ‘revelations’ about under-age girls queuing up for sex with him outside his studio in Texas, and on the other, Jimmy Savile — ‘Sir Jimmy’ — grooming girls as young as 12 by offering them sweets, cigarettes and tickets to be in the audience of his shows.

So, no connection between Peel and Claire.

I am getting really upset about Harriet Harman criticising the Savile enquiry. Any bitch who spent the late 70's trying to decriminalise child pornography really needs to shut the fuck up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydKHMORokNw

Film/Documentary maker/Anti Child abuse activist Bill Maloney in a startling interview about institutional child abuse. From 36 minutes plus, definitely worth watching to the end. He comes across as damaged and credible.

My mother and all her siblings went through the same shit as him and I KNOW it is 100% credible.

The Perfumed Garden posted a particularly good rip of a show today: http://theperfumedgarden.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/john-peel-13th-july-1989.html

Featuring Band Of Susans in session.

Lil Louis - French Kiss (FFRR)
Band Of Susans - Because Of You (Session)
Johnny Osbourne and Chaka Demus - Few Dollars More (Digital B)
Carcass -Exhume To Consume (Earache)
Dutiful Daughter - January (Dislocation)
Honor Role - Listening To Sally (Homestead)
3rd Bass - Steppin' To The A.M. (Def Jam)
Band Of Susans - Hard Light (Session)
Tyrannosaurus Rex - Juniper Suction (Regal Zonophone)
Napalm Death - The Missing Link (Earache)
Culture - Send Some Rain (Joe Gibbs)
Band Of Susans - Which Dream Came True (Session)
Birdland - White (Lazy)
Elliptical Trampolines - Deliciously Deranged (Scam/Bop Cassettes)
Anhrefn - Edrych Ar Y Rude Boys (Released Emotions)
Cranes - Focus Breathe (Bite Back)
The Orb - The Roof Is On Fire (Wau! Mr Modo)
Band Of Susans - Too Late (Session)
U Thant - Dim I.D. (Recordiau Thant)

In the middle of all this nasty stuff there's DJ Martian getting very angry about John Peel being replaced by Rod Stewart during his upcoming holidays. In Autumn 2004. Oh dear.

time makes fools of us all, and DJ Martian in particular

Best musical curator ever. Eclectic shows and The Mighty Fall.

That Julie Burchill thing upthread actually has some nuance and perspective, compared to the more commonplace positions taken now.

Why, did it turn out he wasn’t shagging girls in their teens or something?

No, I mean it's broadly true.

You'd have to check like 12 specialized music shows (world music, jamaican music, techno, grindcore, gabba, pre 50's overlooked music, blues, folk, pornogrind, jungle, idm, hardcore, soca, calypso, uk garage, asiatic music...) to have an equivalent to Peel's show.
And assuming those dj's are independent and with a broad eclectic taste like him.
I think it was a perfect program to be exposed to different music and not only the usual indie acts discussed ad nauseam.
Was John Peel the best musical curator of all time?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP1a2V6vndE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kN9oKo2zCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeqvL1HD04s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOjv8N_BZ3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP1a2V6vndE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kN9oKo2zCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeqvL1HD04s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOjv8N_BZ3c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gczWIMCkBM4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5h6o3KUnuo