John Peel’s Shed

What’s the only London tube station containing no letters from the word mackerel?

If you don’t know, maybe you need to listen to the radio more?  (Specifically, to Steve Wright in his heyday).

But maybe you were more of a John Peel fan.  His weird, wonderful mix was in a different league from the usual commercial mush, or even Radio 1 of the time.

Even as a seasoned presenter he showed more passion and innovation than jumped up DJs half his age.  His Desert Island Discs were recently re-broadcast on Radio 4, where he revealed his original remit was “to look beyond the horizons of pop”.  He surely succeeded beyond all expectations.

But eventually even the great man himself started to drown under a sea of vinyl sent by bands hoping for airtime.  So he offered all the records from his shed to the listener who could best sum up his show. 

The lucky recipient was a student called John Osborne, with the winning phrase: "Records you want to hear, played by a man who wants you to hear them".

Once he’d got over the first problem – he didn’t own a record player – he spent a good part of the next six years working his way through the fascinating, eclectic mix of sounds liberated from Peel’s shed.

Favourites included a fantastic punk take on boybands called Oizone, and the incomparable Screeming Lord Such, famous not for his faultering pop career but rather as founder of the marvelous Monster Raving Loony Party (whose policies including making winter shorter by scrapping January and February, bringing peace to the middle east by rebranding the 'roadmap' as a satnav - and stopping the country going to the dogs by banning greyhound racing).

Osborne was desperate to share his new-found treasures, and approached ‘Future Radio’, his local community station.  They sound like something from Alan Partridge, but were clearly astute enough to give him airtime.  There followed a book and now a theatre show, taking the records as a starting-point, but also waxing lyrical about radio in all its varieties.  

Having just re-watched Radio Days, Woody Allen’s cinematic eulogy to the golden era of the wireless, it was interesting that it now falls to a form of stand-up to make the case.  But he makes it well, having spent each day listening to a different radio station whilst surviving his mind-numbing data-processing job at Anglia Windows.  His gentle, humourous journey takes us not only through music, but also the stories told inbetween tracks. 

These range from a rare, touching tale in between Virgin Radio’s mundanity, through to the strangeness of Resonance FM’s ‘Me and My Floor’ (the ambient noise from leaving a mic on a lounge floor for an hour – different floor each programme).

Despite the range of radio he experienced, his two best clips were probably from the ever-present Radio 1.

Terry Wogan told a corking story about an aunt who sent her niece a card at Christmas containing just the message ‘Get your own presents this year’.  Imagine how she felt when she realised months later that she had forgotten to include the book tokens!

And Steve Wright’s fishy brainteaser – the answer to which, of course, is St John’s Wood. 

My first record, bought with my brother Jonny, was by the Buggles, a band worthy of John Peel airtime.  The track, naturally, was Video Killed The Radio Star. 

Happily it didn’t – radio has evolved, just as the music it plays, but even in this image-heavy age the trusty wireless continues to form an important and enriching part of our lives – long may it continue!