Equus: John Peel’s Music - Sunday 14 February 1993 (BFBS)

Going by his comments, it doesn’t seem that John Peel would have been rushing to add this edition of his BFBS programme to his showreel. At the end of it, he apologised to listeners for a rather untidy programme. It’ll all be different next week, loads of your requests. I promise this every week and always fail to deliver. It’s poignant to consider that he was still promising to come back and play listeners’ requests when he broadcast his final show 11 years later.  Personally, I think Peel was being too critical of himself as I don’t remember too many mistakes or incoherence.

If we’re looking for reasons why Peel may have felt that the show had been under par, then Dave Lee Travis has to be held partially accountable.  Travis was six months away from resigning on air in protest at the changes Matthew Bannister was implementing at Radio 1, but in early 1993 he was still a fixture of the station’s daytime weekend schedule - playing Lucien Bokilo records as well - so his and Peel’s paths were likely to cross if Peel went into Broadcasting House early enough on a Saturday. Although Peel acknowledged that he and Travis’s attitudes towards life were very different from one another, he got on well with DLT, feeling that, in a previous life I must have pulled a thorn out of his paw, because he’s always very amiable towards me whenever we meet. But when Peel was working in the Radio 1 offices, the previous day, he found himself in close proximity to an editing suite where a pre-recorded show hosted by Travis was being prepared for broadcast.  One thing which irritated Peel about Travis was his tendency to “hilariously” bastardise words, phrases and names. Hence Kylie Minogue became Killie Minnogoo and the BBC World Service, for which both men recorded programmes, would be referred to as the BBC Wild Service and so on. Peel takes up the story…

He’ll call people things like Olivia Neutron Bomb and Dusty Springboard, you know, things which people haven’t said for 20 years…Somebody was playing this pre-record in the corridor, very, very loudly and very, very often. And he kept saying - and I knew he was going to say it - he was talking about some event which had happened to a listener. And he said, “She said, that her parents walked in, and her boyfriend was standing there,” and I thought to meself , he’s going to say “In the nuddy.”And he did! He said “In the nuddy”. And I spent the rest of the day - well, about an hour to be honest - hearing this over and over again. And by the end of  the hour, I was fit for hospitalisation, frankly.

There’s always something to put trivial irritations into perspective, and the news bulletin duly provided it with news that the body of toddler James Bulger (Caution advised - article contains distressing content), who had been missing for two days, had been discovered in Liverpool.

Only one track that made my selections list from this show fell out of favour with me.

Tsunami - Sometimes a Notion: Coming out of Arlington, Virginia, Tsunami were a bit of a fancy of Peel’s around this time, perhaps due to a similarity of sound with PJ Harvey.  I only came into this show halfway through his playing of this track, and my interest was piqued, so I put it down with a question mark next to it. Ultimately, it sounded a little too middle of the road for me.  Sometimes a Notion featured on a three-track single called Souvenir Folder of Beautiful Arlington, VA which was distributed by an Australian label called IV Recordings. Peel’s copy was Number 88 in a limited edition White label of 100 copies. It’s possible that the title of the track was inspired by Ken Kesey’s 1964 book, Sometimes a Great Notion which was adapted into a 1971 film directed by and starring Paul Newman.

John Peel’s Valentine’s Day tracklisting.