9 John Peel Quotes on Radio

John Peel quotes on radio

9. In case you're wondering who this funny old bloke is, I'm the one who comes on Radio 1 late at night and plays records made by sulky Belgian art students in basements dying of TB. (Peel's compering debut on teen chart-music show 'Top Of The Pops')

13. I think I was a handy safety valve for some time. If people called up to complain about the safe and predictable nature of the station's playlist, someone could always tell them, 'Well you can always listen to John Peel. He plays strange discs.'

18. I've had several complaints today, all asking to bring back Lisa I'Anson. This next record is for you, Mr Simpson of Plymouth. It's 'BoltThrower'... (John terrorising radio one's lunchtime audience while standing in for a sick DJ.)

25. People sometimes ask me what I do this show for. I don't do it for the credibility or the cool, I don't do it for the major record labels, I don't do it for the music industry... I do it for people like (pause) The Undertones. (After playing The Undertones debut EP for the second time)

30. While that was going on my gums started bleeding. I'm not exactly sure what the significance of this is, perhaps it's the prelude to a religious experience. I certainly hope not.

39. Now this is... talk about not being able to pronounce things, I'm in real trouble with this next one, because the name of the band... well it's spelt K-U-K-L. Now how would you pronounce that? I mean given that it's some kind of nordic language that you're not entirely familiar with. Well I checked around a bit, with people who know the band and they said, well, it's pronounced 'Curcle'. So I said 'Curcle', I mean that seems, you know, feasible... daft, but feasible... so K-U-K-L, Curcle, so I went ahead and that's what I said when I did a radio programme featuring this domestically, and a member of the band phoned up and said 'No, it's not Curcle at all, it's...' he didn't say it like this at all but he said '... it's pronounced Krchk'. And I said, well how can it be pronounced Krchk, I said, cause there's no 'R' in it... there's an 'L'... and the 'L' is at the end, you know, all that kind of thing. Anyway, he says it's Krchk, so this is Krchk, and frankly the title of the piece I have no intention at all of trying to pronounce, it's spelt S-O-N-G-U-L-L and it's almost certainly pronounced 'Lester'. (plays the record) That's Kukl, pronounced Krchk and this is John Peel's Music, pronounced 'Excuse me, but isn't that my ladder?'

46. And from Richard, one of the three pieces of mail which arrived this week, and it says 'Look out for the German all-female ensemble called Breast. Have they made any records?' Well if they have I certainly wouldn't be able to play them on the BBC, not with a name like that, because at the BBC nobody has breasts of course. But here at BFBS they look at things very differently. I've got quite a reasonable set of breasts myself actually.

49. And this week's programme is being engineered by Nicky, whose loveliness is enough to drive fat men to drink, but in her defence she'll come and have a drink with you while you do it. But Kevin has dropped into the studio to tell me that he's just been to see, in the last week, Yes and Status Quo. So representatives from the Peel Foundation are taking him outside for a full frontal lobotomy in the hope that something can be done to improve his emotional condition.

63. (About to play a track which started very quietly) I've got to keep talking for a few seconds, because it starts so quietly, you see, that we might be interrupted by All Saints, and we wouldn't want that really, would we?