50 Facts About Peel Session

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, known professionally as John Peel Session, was an English disc jockey and radio presenter.

Peel Session was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004.

Peel Session was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio.

Peel Session is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of multiple genres, including pop, dub reggae, punk rock and post-punk, electronic music and dance music, indie rock, extreme metal and British hip hop.

Peel Session appeared on television occasionally as one of the presenters of Top of the Pops in the 1980s, and provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes.

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Peel Session 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.

John Peel Session was born in Heswall Nursing Home in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool, the eldest of three sons of Robert Leslie Ravenscroft, a successful cotton merchant, and his wife Joan Mary .

Peel Session was educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School, where one of his contemporaries was future Monty Python member Michael Palin.

Peel Session was an avid radio listener and record collector from an early age, beginning with music offered by the American Forces Network and Radio Luxembourg.

Peel Session recalled an early desire to host a radio programme of his own "so that I could play music that I heard and wanted others to hear".

Peel Session completed his National Service in 1959 in the Royal Artillery as a B2 radar operator.

In 1960, aged 21, Peel Session went to the United States to work for a cotton producer who had business dealings with his father.

Peel Session took a number of other jobs afterwards, including working as a travelling insurance salesman.

Peel Session later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, until 1965, when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California, and used his birth name, John Ravenscroft, to present the breakfast show.

Peel Session returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshore pirate radio station Radio London.

Peel Session was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme, The Perfumed Garden.

Peel Session's show was an outlet for the music of the UK underground scene.

Peel Session played classic blues, folk music and psychedelic rock, with an emphasis on the new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco.

When Radio London closed on 14 August 1967, Peel Session joined the BBC's new music station, BBC Radio 1, which began broadcasting on 30 September 1967.

Peel Session said he felt he was hired because the BBC "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 Session presented a programme called Top Gear; at first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs, but in February 1968 he was given sole charge of Top Gear.

Peel Session played an eclectic mix of the music that caught his attention, which he would continue to do throughout his career.

Peel Session was an occasional presenter of Top of the Pops on BBC1 from the late 1960s until the 1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly.

Peel Session often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably the Glastonbury Festival.

Between 1995 and 1997, Peel Session presented Offspring, a show about children, on BBC Radio 4.

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When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel Session requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real-life stories more entertaining.

Peel Session made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life Grumpy Old Men.

Peel Session appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including This Is Your Life, Travels With My Camera and Going Home, and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series Classic Trains.

Peel Session was in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's A Life of Grime.

Peel Session wore Liverpool football colours and walked down the aisle to the song "You'll Never Walk Alone".

Peel Session claimed that, in the early 1960s, the only available women were in high school.

Peel Session hosted a "Schoolgirl of the Year" competition on the Radio 1 show in the early 1970s.

Peel Session 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.

Peel Session's coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song, The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks".

Peel Session 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".

Peel Session's body was buried in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church in Great Finborough, Suffolk.

The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel Session had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One was compiled and broadcast.

In 1969, Peel Session founded Dandelion Records so that he could release the debut album by Bridget St John, which he produced.

Peel Session 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".

John Peel Session is sometimes confused with the more prolific record producer Jonathan Peel Session, who was an in-house music producer for EMI before going freelance in 1970.

John Peel Session wrote in his autobiography, Margrave of the Marshes, that the band of which he owned the most records was The Fall.

Peel Session kept in contact with many of the artists he championed but only met Smith on two, apparently awkward, occasions.

Peel Session described Lianne Hall as one of the great English voices.

Peel Session listed Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica as his number 1, having previously described it as "a work of art".

Peel Session 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.

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Peel Session was awarded many honorary degrees including an MA from the University of East Anglia, doctorates, various degrees and a fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University.

Peel Session was appointed an OBE in 1998, for his services to British music.

On 13 October 2005, the first "John Peel Session Day" was held to mark the anniversary of his last show.

In 2012 Peel Session was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt.

In 2009 blue plaques bearing Peel Session's name were unveiled at two former recording studios in Rochdale – one at the site of Tractor Sound Studios in Heywood, the other at the site of the Kenion Street Music Building – to recognise Peel Session's contribution to the local music industry.