Coordinates: 53°27′16″N 2°13′29″W / 53.4544°N 2.2247°W / 53.4544; -2.2247

Rusholme
Moss Lane East, looking towards Wilmslow Road in Rusholme
Rusholme  Rusholme shown within Greater Manchester
Population	14,422
OS grid reference	SJ850953
Metropolitan borough	City of Manchester
Metropolitan county	Greater Manchester
Region	North West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	MANCHESTER
Postcode district	M14
Dialling code	0161
Police	Greater Manchester
Fire	Greater Manchester
Ambulance	North West
EU Parliament	North West England
UK Parliament	Manchester Gorton
List of places: UK • England • Greater Manchester

Rusholme is now a suburban locality in Manchester, England, about two miles south of Manchester city centre. It has a large student population, with several student halls and many students renting privately in the area. There are larger houses towards the Victoria Park neighbourhood, however most of the housing consists of low-cost terraced houses, around 70–100 years old. Wilmslow Road is the major thoroughfare through the area. In the south-west is a large public park, Platt Fields Park, featuring a large pleasure lake and Platt Hall.

History[link]

Etymology[link]

Rusholme, unlike other place names in Manchester with the suffix holme is not a true water meadow. Its name derives from ryscum the dative plural of the Old English rysc, a "rush" meaning at the rushes. The name was recorded as Russum in 1235, Ryssham in 1316 and Rysholme in 1551.^[1]

Early history[link]

Late in the Roman occupation of Britain a hoard of about 200 gold coins was hidden in the valley of the Gore Brook. These coins date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and were found where Birchfields Road crosses the brook in the 1890s. They are now kept in the Manchester Museum.^[2]

Records of the name Rusholme do not appear until the mid-13th century when "Russum" is mentioned; at this time it is known that a house existed at Platt which was replaced by a larger house of black and white construction which was the home of the Platts until the mid-18th century when the present classical building replaced it. An early record of the Platt estate mentions the Nico Ditch, an Anglo-Saxon linear earthwork which runs east-west through the area and was probably used as an administrative boundary. It dates from the 8th or 9th century.^[3] Tales of battles between the Danes and the Normans associated with the road names of Danes Road and Norman Road are not accepted by historians. Another black and white hall existed at Birch; this was probably built in the 16th century.^[2]

The economy of the area was dependent on agriculture until the 18th century; however during the 17th and 18th centuries there was a growth of cottage industries such as spinning, weaving and brickmaking.^[4]

Social history[link]

Platt Lane in Rusholme

Over the Victorian era, there were several different socio-political meanings of Rusholme. Primarily, it was a township based around a general area known as Rusholme since at least the thirteenth century. The area grew into a township, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had its own government responsible for public health, roads, policing, poor relief, and other local government tasks. Rusholme was originally a politically autonomous entity that was vital to its self-conception as a discrete area even after it lost almost all political self-control upon incorporation into Manchester. The low-cost terraced housing built between 1880 and 1930 dominates the landscape, along with a sprawling council housing estate erected in the interwar era.

Political history[link]

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was married in the Congregational Church, Rusholme, in 1877, to Miss Helen Melland.^[5] Richard Cobden, William Royle (author of a history of the township), and Thomas Lowe (1815–1892) were long-time residents. Lowe began working as a baker and became also a flour dealer and later a nurseryman and finally the proprietor of a dairy.^[6][7]

Conservative Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw was for twenty-six years one of the councillors for Rusholme on Manchester City Council before becoming Lord Mayor of Manchester from 1975–1976.

Other local politicians include ward councillors Paul Shannon, a Liberal Democrat and deputy leader of the Manchester City Council Liberal Democrat group. Rabnawaz Akbar was elected as Labour councillor for Rusholme ward in May 2010. Councillor Akbar serves on the Citizenship and Inclusion Committee. His end of term is 2014.

Governance[link]

Rusholme was an independent town until incorporation into Manchester in 1885.

It is served in Westminster by the MP for Gorton (election results), currently the Rt Hon Sir Gerald Kaufman MP. In May 2012 Ahmed Ali was elected as Labour councillor for the ward. In May 2011 Kate Chappell was elected as Labour councillor for the ward. In 2010 Rabnawaz Akbar was elected as Labour councillor for the ward.

Geography[link]

The community is surrounded by Fallowfield to the south, Moss Side to the west, Victoria Park to the east and Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north.

Neighbouring districts and places.

	Hulme	Manchester	Ardwick
	Moss Side		Longsight
		Rusholme    East
	Whalley Range Chorlton-cum-Hardy	Fallowfield	Levenshulme

Platt Fields Park[link]

A view of Platt Fields Park

A large public park in the south-west, it opened in 1910 and proved to be very popular; it was maintained by a team of up to 50 gardeners until the second half of the 20th century. The centrepiece of the park is a large pleasure lake, which is used for boating and fishing. The grounds contain Platt Hall, there are several formal gardens and three dedicated show fields for large outdoor events. In 2010, Platt Fields Park was awarded a Green Flag Award for achieving the national standard for parks and green spaces.

Churches[link]

The Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity is on Platt Lane. At Birch in Rusholme is the much older chapel of St James, now disused. The present building was built in 1845-46 to replace the earlier chapel of 1595. The architect was J. M. Derick and it is in Gothic revival style. The southwest tower is topped with a broach spire and the aisle arcades are of five bays.^[8] In Thurloe Street is the Roman Catholic Church of St Edward. The architect was E. W. Pugin and the church was built in 1861-62. It is small and the exterior is sober; the planned southwest tower was never built and there is an apse at the east end. The arcades have short polished granite columns.^[9]

Culture and cultural references[link]

John Ruskin gave the lectures later published as Sesame and Lilies in 1865 at Rusholme Town Hall.

Film Studios Manchester opened in a converted Wesleyan church on Dickenson Road in 1947. The first Manchester-made feature film was Cup-Tie Honeymoon starring Sandy Powell and Pat Phoenix. It was the first of many similar films made at the site. From 1947 to 1954 it was the home of Mancunian Film Studios, many of whose productions were filmed on local streets. In 1963 the BBC bought the studios as its northern base and on New Year's Day, 1964, Jimmy Savile presented the first edition of Top of the Pops from there. It was used until 1971 when the BBC moved to studios in central Manchester.

Rusholme was mentioned in the song "Rusholme Ruffians" by The Smiths on their 1985 album Meat Is Murder. Mint Royale's 1999 album On the Ropes contained a track titled "From Rusholme with Love".

Rusholme was the home of the second indoor ice skating rink in England, after the London Glaciarium, although this has since been replaced by a grocery store.

Social and economic conditions[link]

Social conditions[link]

There are a number of purpose-built student halls in the Victoria Park area (for example Hulme Hall), and a large number of students rent privately in Rusholme. There is a South Asian community, as well as a community of working class white people.^{[citation needed]}

In the past Rusholme has been one of the areas in south Manchester, including Longsight, Hulme, Moss Side, and Old Trafford to have suffered a problem with gang-related gun crime, however in recent years shooting incidents have significantly declined.^[10]

Wilmslow Road[link]

Wilmslow Road (B5117), Rusholme

Wilmslow Road is part of the B5117, a major thoroughfare running from Parrs Wood north into Manchester City Centre transversing the campuses of the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. It also forms part of what is the busiest bus route in Europe,^[11] with many bus stops being serviced by one bus from one of many different bus companies every 60 to 90 seconds during peak times. There are a large number of Indian and Middle Eastern restaurants along a section of this road, known locally as the curry mile. It contains at least seventy restaurants, take-aways and kebab houses specialising in the cuisines of South Asia and the Middle East^{[citation needed]}. There are also a variety of fashion, grocery and music shops along this section of the road, as well as several traditional English pubs including Hardy's Well, The Whitworth, and The Huntsman Inn.

Notable people[link]

The cricket writer and music critic Neville Cardus was born in Rusholme, as was musician Roy Harper and actress Tina O'Brien.

References[link]

Footnotes

Bibliography

Further reading[link]

• Cronin, Jill & Rhodes, Frank (2006) Rusholme and Victoria Park. Stroud: Tempus ISBN 0-7524-4198-1
• Royle, William (1905) Rusholme Past and Present, being a gossipy talk of men and things. Manchester: Wm. Hough & Sons
  • --do.--(1914) History of Rusholme, with a gossipy talk of men and things. Manchester: Printed at the W. Morris Press
  • Royle, D. K. (1924) William Royle of Rusholme. Manchester: Sherratt & Hughes
• Sussex, Gay & Helm, Peter (1984) Looking back at Rusholme & Fallowfield. Altrincham: Willow

External links[link]

• Rusholme – Districts & Suburbs of Manchester England
• Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive
• Friends of Platt Fields Park
• Rusholme Curry Mile Manchester
• Dynamo Bowden Athletic Football club

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2010)

John Peel
John Peel in a studio in Yalding House
Birth name	John Robert Parker Ravenscroft
Born	(1939-08-30)30 August 1939 Heswall, England
Died	25 October 2004(2004-10-25) (aged 65) Cusco, Peru
Country	United Kingdom
Website	BBC minisite

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004. He was known for his eclectic taste in music and his honest and warm broadcasting style.

He was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio, and he is widely acknowledged for promoting artists working in various genres, including pop, reggae, indie rock, alternative rock, punk, hardcore punk, breakcore, grindcore, death metal, British hip hop, and dance music.

Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular 'Peel sessions', which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist live in the BBC's studios, and which often provided the first major national coverage to bands that later would achieve great fame. (These 'sessions' are similar to 'Live Lounge' sessions recorded today for the station.) Another popular feature of his shows was the annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year.

Peel appeared frequently on British television as one of the presenters of Top of the Pops in the 1980s, and he provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his Home Truths programme, which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives.

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

Peel was born in Heswall Cottage Hospital in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool, and grew up in the nearby village of Burton.^[1] His father was an upper middle class cotton merchant,^[2] and he was sent away to be educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School.^[3]

His housemaster, R H J Brooke, whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive," wrote on one of his school reports, "Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays."^[4] In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel revealed that he had been raped by an older pupil while at Shrewsbury.^[5]

After finishing his National Service in 1959 in the Royal Artillery as a B2 radar operator,^[6] he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill in Rochdale^[7] and travelled home each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. Whilst in Rochdale Monday to Friday, he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the area of Milkstone Road and Drake Street. Peel was a vegetarian.^[8]

United States[link]

In 1960, he went to the United States to work for a cotton producer who had business dealings with his father.^[9] Once this job finished, he took a number of others, including working as a travelling insurance salesman, remaining in the United States until 1967. While in Dallas, Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he spoke to John F. Kennedy as the presidential candidate and his running mate, Lyndon B. Johnson, who were touring the city during the 1960 Presidential election campaign.

Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Peel passed himself off as a reporter for the Liverpool Echo in order to attend the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald, and he and a friend can be seen in the footage of the 22/23 November midnight press conference at Dallas Police Department when Oswald was paraded before the media.^[10] He later phoned in the story to the Liverpool Echo.

While working for the insurance company, Peel filed card programs for an early IBM 1410 computer (which led to his entry in Who's Who noting him as a former computer programmer), and he got his first radio job, albeit unpaid, working for WRR (AM) in Dallas. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme Kat's Karavan, which was primarily hosted by the American singer and radio personality Jim Lowe. Following this, and as Beatlemania hit the United States, Peel got a job with the Dallas radio station KLIF as the official The Beatles correspondent on the strength of his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma until 1965 when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California, using the name John Ravencroft to present the breakfast show.^[11]

While in Dallas, in 1965, he married his first wife, Shirley Anne Milburn, in what Peel later described as a "mutual defence pact". The marriage was never happy and although she accompanied Peel back to Britain in 1967, they were soon separated. The divorce became final in 1973.^[12]

Return to Britain[link]

Peel returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshore pirate radio station Radio London. He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme called The Perfumed Garden (some thought it was named after an erotic book famous at the time - which Peel claimed never to have read). It was on "Big L" that he first adopted the name John Peel (the name was suggested by a Radio London secretary) and established himself as a distinctive radio voice.

Peel's show was an outlet for the music of the UK underground scene. He played classic blues, folk music and psychedelic rock, with an emphasis on the new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco. As important as the musical content of the programme was the personal—sometimes confessional—tone of Peel's presentation, and the listener participation it engendered. Underground events he had attended during his periods of shore leave, like the UFO Club and "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream", together with causes célèbres like the drug "busts" of the Rolling Stones and John "Hoppy" Hopkins, were discussed between records. All this was far removed from Radio London's daytime format. Listeners sent Peel letters, poems, and records from their own collections, so that the programme became a vehicle for two-way communication; by the final week of Radio London he was receiving far more mail than any other DJ on the station.^[13]

After the closure of Radio London in 1967 Peel wrote a column under the title The Perfumed Garden for the underground newspaper the International Times (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969), in which he showed himself to be a committed, if critical, supporter of the ideals of the underground. A Perfumed Garden mailing list was set up by a group of keen listeners, which facilitated contacts and gave rise to numerous small-scale, local arts projects typical of the time, including the poetry magazine Sol.

BBC career[link]

Peel in a record shop in Bochum, Germany

When Radio London closed down on 14 August 1967, John Peel joined the BBC's new pop music station, BBC Radio 1, which began broadcasting the following month. Unlike Big L, Radio 1 was not a full-time station, but a hybrid of recorded music and live studio orchestras. Peel recalled, "I was one of the first lot on Radio 1 and I think it was mainly because ... Radio 1 had no real idea what they were doing so they had to take people off the pirate ships because there wasn't anybody else." Peel presented a programme called Top Gear. At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs (Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 he was given sole charge of Top Gear; he continued to present the show until it ended in 1975. Peel played an eclectic mix of the music that caught his attention, which he would continue to do throughout his career.

During 1969, after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on VD on his Night Ride programme, Peel received significant media attention because he divulged on air that he had suffered from a sexually transmitted disease earlier that year. This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971 Oz obscenity trial.

The Night Ride programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from where The Perfumed Garden had left off. It featured rock, folk, blues, classical and electronic music. A unique feature of the programme was the inclusion of tracks, mostly of exotic non-Western music, drawn from the BBC Sound Archive; the most popular of these were gathered on a BBC Records LP, John Peel's Archive Things (1970). Night Ride also featured poetry readings and numerous interviews with a wide range of guests, including personal friends Marc Bolan, journalist and musician Mick Farren, poet Pete Roche, and singer-songwriter Bridget St. John and stars such as the Byrds, the Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The programme captured much of the creative activity of the underground scene. Its anti-establishment stance and unpredictability did not find approval with the BBC hierarchy, and it ended in September 1969 after 18 months. In his sleeve notes to the Archive Things LP Peel calls the free-form nature of Night Ride his preferred radio format. His subsequent shows featured a mixture of records and live sessions, a format which would characterise his Radio 1 programmes for the rest of his career.

After separation from his first wife, Peel's personal life began to stabilise, as he found friendship and support from new Top Gear producer John Walters - and from his girlfriend Sheila Gilhooly, who he identified on-air as "the Pig". Peel married Sheila on 31 August 1974. The reception was in London's Regent's Park, with Walters as best man. Peel wore Liverpool football colours (red) and walked down the aisle to the song "You'll Never Walk Alone". Their sheepdog, Woggle, served as a bridesmaid.

Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. In early 1977 station controller Derek Chinnery contacted John Walters and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing any punk, which he (Chinnery) had read about in the press and disapproved of. Chinnery was evidently somewhat surprised by Walters' reply that in recent weeks they had been playing little else.^[14] In 1979 Peel stated: "They leave you to get on with it. I'm paid money by the BBC not to go off and work for a commercial radio station...I wouldn't want to go to one anyway, because they wouldn't let me do what the BBC let me do."^[15]

Peel's reputation as an important DJ breaking unsigned acts into the mainstream was such that young hopefuls sent him an enormous amount of records, CDs, and tapes. When he returned home from a three week holiday at the end of 1986 there were 173 LPs, 91 12"s and 179 7"s waiting for him. Another example in point is that in 1983 unsigned artist Billy Bragg drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom biryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry, the subsequent airplay launching his career.^[16] Another example is that John Peel's favourite record for over a year in the late seventies/early eighties was Mopsie Beans EP "One Out" .^[17]

Peel Acres

In the 1970s Peel and Sheila moved to a thatched cottage in the village of Great Finborough near Stowmarket in Suffolk, nicknamed "Peel Acres". In later years Peel broadcast many of his shows from a studio in the house, with Sheila and their children often being involved or at least mentioned. Peel's passion for Liverpool F.C. was reflected in his children's names: William Robert Anfield, Alexandra Mary Anfield, Thomas James Dalglish, and Florence Victoria Shankly. His later shows also regularly featured live performances (broadcast live, unlike the pre-recorded Peel sessions), mostly from BBC Maida Vale Studios in West London, but occasionally in the Peel Acres living room.

Studio at Peel Acres

In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on the BBC World Service, 30 years on the British Forces Broadcasting Service BFBS (John Peel's Music on BFBS), VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands, YLE Radio Mafia in Finland, Ö3 in Austria (Nachtexpress), and on Radio 4U, Radio Eins (Peel ...), Radio Bremen (Ritz) and some independent radio stations around FSK Hamburg in Germany. As a result of his BFBS programme he was voted, in Germany, 'Top DJ in Europe'.

Peel was an occasional presenter of Top of the Pops on BBC 1 TV from the late 1960s until the 1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly. In 1971 he appeared not as presenter but performer, alongside Rod Stewart and The Faces, pretending to play mandolin on "Maggie May". He often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably Glastonbury Festival.

Later years[link]

Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presented a show about children, called Offspring, on BBC Radio 4. In 1998, Offspring grew into the magazine-style documentary show Home Truths. When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real life stories more entertaining. Home Truths was described by occasional stand-in presenter John Walters as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire". Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life Grumpy Old Men. His only appearance in an acting role in film was in 1999 as a "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in Five Seconds to Spare, although he had provided narration for others.^[18]

He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including This Is Your Life (1996, BBC), Travels With My Camera (1996, Channel 4 TV) and Going Home (2002, ITV TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series Classic Trains.^[19] He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's A Life of Grime.

At the age of 62 he was diagnosed with diabetes, following many years of fatigue.^[20]

In April 2003, the publishers Transworld successfully wooed Peel with a package worth up to £1.6 million for his autobiography, having placed an advert in a national newspaper aimed only at Peel. Unfinished at the time of his death it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under the title Margrave of the Marshes. A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings, The Olivetti Chronicles, was published in 2008.^[21]

Death[link]

Peel died suddenly at the age of 65 from a heart attack on 25 October 2004, on a working holiday in the Inca city of Cusco in Peru. Shortly after the announcement of his death, tributes began to arrive from fans and supporters both in and out of public life. On 26 October 2004 BBC Radio 1 cleared its schedules to broadcast a day of tributes. London's Evening Standard boards that afternoon read "the day the music died".

Peel had often spoken wryly of his eventual death. He once said on the show Room 101, "I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't."^[22] At one point, he said that if he died before his producer John Walters, he wanted the latter to play Roy Harper's "When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease". Walters having died in 2001, it was left to Andy Kershaw to end his tribute programme to Peel on BBC Radio 3 with the song. Peel's stand-in on his Radio 1 slot, Rob da Bank, also played the song at the start of the final show before his funeral. Another time, Peel said he'd like to be remembered with a gospel song. He stated that the final record he would play would be the Rev C. L. Franklin's sermon "Dry Bones in The Valley".

On his Home Truths BBC radio show John once commented about his own death: "I definitely want to be buried, although not yet. I'm 61 on Wednesday - just a working day for me, I'm afraid - so actuarily (sic) I should have a mile or two left in me, but I do want the children to be able to stand solemnly at my graveside and think lovely thoughts along the lines of 'Get out of that one, you swine', which they won't be able to do if I've been cremated. I think I want 'Teenage dreams, so hard to beat' on my gravestone and every night at dusk the trumpeters of the 5th Battalion King's Shropshire Light Infantry to play Misty in Roots' Mankind over the grave. Lovely."^{[citation needed]}

Peel's funeral, on 12 November 2004, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was attended by over a thousand people, including many of the artists he had championed. Eulogies were read by his brother, Alan Ravenscroft, and DJ Paul Gambaccini. The service ended with clips of him talking about his life and his coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song, The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks".^[23] Peel had written that, apart from his name, all he wanted on his gravestone were the words, "Teenage dreams, so hard to beat", from the lyrics of "Teenage Kicks".^[24] A headstone engraved in accordance with his wishes was placed at his grave in 2008.^[25] Peel is buried at St Andrew's Church, in the village of Great Finborough, Suffolk.

Life in music[link]

Peel sessions[link]

A feature of Peel's BBC Radio 1 shows were the famous John Peel Sessions, which usually consisted of four pieces of music pre-recorded at the BBC's studios. The sessions originally came about due to restrictions imposed on the BBC by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performance Limited which represented the record companies dominated by the EMI cartel. Because of these restrictions the BBC had been forced to hire bands and orchestras to render cover versions of recorded music. The theory behind this device was that it would create employment and force people to buy records and not listen to them free of charge on the air. One of the reasons why all of the offshore broadcasting stations of the 1960s were called "pirates" was because they operated outside of British laws and were not bound by the needle time restriction on the number of records they could play on the air.

The BBC employed its own house bands and orchestras and it also engaged outside bands to record exclusive tracks for its programmes in BBC studios. This was the reason why Peel was able to use "session men" in his own programmes. Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough and ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. Peel remained on BBC Radio 1 for 37 years, until his death in 2004. During that time over 4000 sessions were recorded by over 2000 artists.^[26] Many classic Peel Sessions have been released on record, particularly by the Strange Fruit label.

Festive Fifty[link]

An annual tradition of Peel's Radio 1 show was the Festive Fifty—a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners. Despite Peel's eclectic play list, the Festive Fifty tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988. In 1991 the broadcast of the chart was cancelled due to a lack of votes, although many have speculated that it was because it didn't feature a single entry from the dance acts that Peel had been championing that year^{[citation needed]}. Topped by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme in 1993.^[27] The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One was compiled and broadcast.^[27]

Peel wrote that "The Festive 50 dates back to what was doubtless a crisp September morning in the early-to-mid Seventies, when John Walters and I were musing on life in his uniquely squalid office. In our waggish way, we decided to mock the enthusiasm of the Radio 1 management of the time for programmes with alliterative titles. Content, we felt, was of less importance than a snappy Radio Times billing. In the course of our historic meeting we had, I imagine, some fine reasons for dismissing the idea of a Festive 40 and going instead for a Festive 50, a decision that was to ruin my Decembers for years to come, condemning me to night after night at home with a ledger, when I could have been out and about having fun, fun, fun."^[28]

After his death, the Festive Fifty was continued on Radio 1 by Rob Da Bank, Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame for two years, but then given to Peel-inspired Internet radio station Dandelion Radio, which continues to compile it to this day.

Dandelion Records and Strange Fruit[link]

In 1969 Peel founded Dandelion Records (named after his pet hamster) so he could release the debut album by Bridget St John, which he also produced. The label released 27 albums by 18 different artists before folding in 1972. Of its albums, There is Some Fun Going Forward was a sampler intended to present its acts to a wide audience, however Dandelion was never a great success, with only two releases charting in national charts: Medicine Head in the UK with "(And The) Pictures In The Sky" and Beau in Lebanon with "1917 Revolution".

As Peel stated:

It was never a success financially. In fact, we lost money, if I remember correctly, on every single release bar one. I did quite like it but it was terribly indulgent. Not as indulgent as it would have been had I not had a business partner, admittedly... I liked having a label. It enabled you to put out stuff that you liked without, in those days, having to worry about whether it was going to work commercially. I've never been a good business man.

Peel appeared on one Dandelion release: the David Bedford album Nurses Song with Elephants, recorded at the Marquee Studios, as part of a group playing twenty-seven plastic pipe twirlers on the track "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College".

In the 1980s Peel set up the Strange Fruit Records with Clive Selwood to release material recorded by the BBC for Peel Sessions.

Production (albums)[link]

• 1969: Mike Hart Bleeds - Mike Hart
• 1969: The Year of the Great Leap Sideways - Occasional Word Ensemble
• 1969: Soundtrack - Principal Edwards Magic Theatre
• 1970: New Bottles Old Medicine - Medicine Head
• 1970: Burnin' Red Ivanhoe - Burnin' Red Ivanhoe (co-produced w/ Tony Reeves)
• 1970: The Going's Easy - The Greatest Show on Earth
• 1970: Horizons - The Greatest Show on Earth
• 1970: The Asmoto Running Band - Principal Edwards Magic Theatre
• 1972: Bugger Off! - Stack Waddy
• 1976: Between The Poppy and the Snow - Robert MacLeod

Favourite music[link]

John Peel wrote in his autobiography, Margrave of the Marshes, that the band of which he owned the most records was The Fall. Regulars in the Festive 50, and easily recognised by vocalist Mark E. Smith's distinctive delivery, The Fall became synonymous with Peel's Radio 1 show through the 1980s and 1990s. Peel kept in contact with many of the artists he championed but only met Smith on two, apparently awkward, occasions.

The Misunderstood is the only band that Peel ever personally managed—he first met the band in Riverside, California in 1966 and convinced them to move to London. He championed their music throughout his career; in 1968, he described their 1966 single "I Can Take You to the Sun" as "the best popular record that's ever been recorded."^[29] and shortly before his death, he stated, "If I had to list the ten greatest performances I've seen in my life, one would be The Misunderstood at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, 1966 ... My god, they were a great band!"^[30]

His favourite single is widely known to have been "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones; in an interview in 2001, he stated "There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it."^[31] In the same 2001 interview, he also listed "No More Ghettos in America" by Stanley Winston, "There Must Be Thousands" by The Quads and "Lonely Saturday Night" by Don French as being amongst his all-time favourites. He also described Lianne Hall as one of the great English voices.

A longer list of his favourite singles was revealed in 2005 when the contents of a wooden box in which he stored the records that meant the most to him were made public.^[32] The box was the subject of a television documentary, John Peel's Record Box. Out of 130 vinyl singles in the box, 11 of them were by The White Stripes, more than any other band in the box.^[33]

In 1999 Peel presented a nightly segment on his programme titled the Peelennium, in which he played four recordings from each year of the 20th century.

Awards and honorary degrees[link]

Peel was 11 times Melody Maker's DJ of the year, Sony Broadcaster of the Year in 1993, winner of the publicly-voted Godlike Genius Award from the NME in 1994, Sony Gold Award winner in 2002 and is a member of the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. At the NME awards in 2005 he was Hero of the Year and was posthumously given a special award for "Lifelong Service To Music". At the same event the "John Peel Award For Musical Innovation" was awarded to The Others.

He was awarded many honorary degrees including an MA from the University of East Anglia, doctorates (Anglia Polytechnic University and Sheffield Hallam University), various honorary degrees (University of Liverpool, Open University, University of Portsmouth, University of Bradford) and a fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University.

He was appointed an OBE in 1998, for his services to British music. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time, in which Peel was voted 43rd.

Legacy[link]

Since his death various parties have recognised Peel's influence. A stage for new bands at the Glastonbury Festival, previously known simply as 'The New Bands Tent' was renamed 'The John Peel Stage' in 2005, while in 2008 Merseytravel announced they would be naming a train after him.^[21]

In 2009 the first blue plaque to bear his name was unveiled in Heywood, part of Rochdale, Greater Manchester to recognise Peel's contribution to the local music industry in financing Tractor's recording studios.

On 13 October 2005, the first "John Peel Day" was held to mark the anniversary of his last show.^[34] The BBC encouraged as many bands as possible to stage gigs on the 13th, and over 500 gigs took place in the UK and as far away as Canada and New Zealand, from bands ranging from Peel favourites New Order and The Fall, to many new and unsigned bands. A second John Peel day was held on 12 October 2006, and a third on 11 October 2007. The BBC had originally planned to hold a John Peel Day annually, however Radio 1 has not held any official commemoration of the event since 2007, though a number of gigs still take place around the country to mark the anniversary.^[35][36][37]

At the annual Gilles Peterson's World Wide Awards, the "John Peel Play More Jazz Award" award was named in his honour.

In his Heswall birthplace a pub was opened, named The Ravenscroft, in his honour.^[38]

A number of Peel-related compilation albums have been released since his death, including John Peel and Sheila: The Pig's Big 78s: A Beginner's Guide, a project Peel started with his wife that was left unfinished when he died, and Kats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio (2009), a 4 CD box set. Rock music critic Peter Paphides said in a review of the box set that "[s]ome artists remain forever associated with him", including ...And the Native Hipsters with "There Goes Concorde Again", and Ivor Cutler with "Jam".^[39] A sizable online community has also emerged dedicated to sharing recordings of his radio shows.

Peel's adult sons Tom and William Ravenscroft have followed him into radio DJing and music journalism, with an emphasis on spotting new talent.

In 2011, BBC 6 Music inaugurated the annual John Peel Lecture, named in honour of the DJ.^[40]

In May 2012 a campaign was started to turn demolition threatened Bradford Odeon into the John Peel Creative Arts Centre in the North^[41]. It is proposed that part of his record collection is housed there, plus converting the building back to a live music venue. He met "The Pig" at a gig at the University of Bradford.

See also[link]

• List of Peel sessions
• Category:Peel Sessions recordings

Notes[link]