busker

John Peel memoir

Seems that Peel’s agent has “a goodly chunk of stuff ... but not everything he’d written .... approximately half the book exists."

I had some pals who went to his burial in Suffolk and we had a good old blubbing translatlantic phone call after: truly, that man was part of all our musical DNA.

They read out the Grauniad piece; more blubbing and pathetic outpourings of reminiscences of yore. How Peel himself would have despised us.

He's up there, at the celestial turntable, his nasal tones keeping the cherubim bopping:

"If I was you lot, I'd invest in Kleenex futures. Very flattering, I must say, but if Chris Holmes and his mates don't stop their mewling, they'll miss the highly unusual sax intro by Luke Mainwaring on the new one from Kint Fie and the Muckrakers. Suit yourselves, mourners, but Life goes on - well, maybe not for me, but for the rest of you, I'd cheer up and save your tears for Man U when they go down to the Gunners 3-1."

What? For any Brit in their mid- or late-50s, that dude played the background muzak to our lives: lust, lurve, marriage, kids, and on. We all copped out and settled for best, but on he went, cocking a snoot to The Man, backing his judgment, braving dismissal, just playing the good stuff.

On the question of the sainted JP, I'm still smirking at Mark Lawson's razor job on Tony Blair's croc-tear'd attempt to cash in.