The Comedy of Errors: John Peel Show - BBC Radio 1 (Saturday 20 June 1992)

The greatest bugbear for a radio disc jockey to endure is the programme before theirs over-running.  Between the DJs themselves, it is regarded as the height of disrespect for one jock’s programme to eat into the time scheduled for whoever was following them.  When he was host of Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, Simon Mayo often found himself starting his show with a tut and a sigh due to early morning show host, Gary King being regularly unable to do the handover on time.  Hence why anyone reading this may be saying to themselves, “Gary who?”
In 1992, John Peel found himself following The Rock Show with Tommy Vance on Fridays and Andy Kershaw on Saturdays.  Vance was able to time his endings immaculately; Kershaw occasionally handed over to Peel with apologies for going a few seconds over, which Peel accepted with good grace from his friend.  But on Saturday 20 June 1992, Kershaw had the night off due to Radio 1 spending most of the day broadcasting a live bill of performances at Woburn Abbey ending with a headline set from Dire Straits.  It should have finished by 10:30pm, but instead it overran and Peel’s show, set for an 11pm start, began 13 minutes late.  To judge from his opening remarks, he was seething through every one of those minutes as Mark Knopfler and company played through Wild Theme.

“I tell you what, it’s been an honour to lose 13 minutes of the programme as a result of the marvellous music we’ve heard tonight on One FM from Dire Straits. I wish they could have kept going all night.”

To compound matters, the layout of the studio had changed.  He usually used three turntables and two CD players, but now the CD players outnumbered the turntables meaning that he was now unable to play other pieces of music between the records.  The new setup also caused him to hit the wrong buttons when he was trying to start tracks.
With the summer solstice imminent, the UK was enjoying a spell of good weather.  This was a mixed blessing for Peel though as the warmer temperatures were causing an outbreak of “disgusting spots” under his wristwatch.  He asked for any advice on how best to combat them.  Reuben from South Shields faxed into suggest he wear an Elastoplast under his watch, but Peel felt this would look inelegant, “And I’m such an elegant guy...”.
One disc jockey whose show Peel wouldn’t be over-running into was Gary Davies, whose “pure quality” Sunday night show promising tracks by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Eagles was trailed by Peel on this show.  After the trailer, Peel promised to continue serving up “impure quality” and played Firecracker by Unrest.

Humour was restored by his receiving the tickets which would take himself and the suited Martin Behan to the final of Euro 92 on June 26.  Though even this was fraught with difficulty.  Peel had been waiting for the tickets to be sent to his house, but they had ended up in correspondence sent to
his work address and he only found them, virtually by chance after going through a batch of post at Broadcasting House.  Had he waited another week to do this, they would have lost their chance to go to the final.

The news featured the story of an attempt by U2 to take direct action in protesting the building of a new reactor at Sellafield.

The selections from this show came from the first and last 45 minutes of the programme.  There was one track, I would have liked to share which was unavailable:

Thriller U - You Shook Me Up - reggae track from Thriller U’s latest album, Drive.  Produced by Steely and Clevie.

Two tracks fell from favour:

The Family Cat - Colour Me Grey - I only caught the last minute of this on the file and my notes suggest I was really taken by what I heard.  With PJ Harvey on backing vocals, how could I not be.  But I made a note to listen to the full track and unfortunately, the title turned out to be all too apt.  A rather colourless and whiny miasma of a tune.  I’ll stick to their Peel Session for the time being.

God is my Co-Pilot - 2 Meats - my notes make a big deal of the “Do that again” refrain in this typically chaotic, brisk and puerile track from God is my Co-Pilot.  But coming back for a fresh listen a few weeks ago, the refrain didn’t even crop up enough to be noteworthy.  Without that, there wasn’t much to merit going back for.

With better grace than he began the programme, Peel handed over at 2am on 21/6/92 to Lynn Parsons
and the file catches her beginning her programme with Side 1 Track 1 of every DJ’s Opening Track of the Programme album.

Full tracklisting

Cheer up, John.  They also caused Loose Talk to go out later than billed.

Video courtesy of Telegraph Road in the Spanish City