John Peel was one of those people that you took for granted. You didn’t always listen to him but he’d always been there and so you assumed that would always be the case.
He was a reminder of a time before playlists, and a time when independent meant independent and although he didn’t really fit into Radio 1 any more, it would have been a brave controller who would have suggested moving him.
I don’t listen to him as much as I did fifteen years ago but his radio show was the first place I got to hear bands like the Pixies and the Wedding Present, and I’m going to miss him an awful lot.
Read about him here, here, here and here. Talk about him here.