Biography

He didn't rate either Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Police or Dire Straits, all of whom went on to multi-million-selling and stadium-filling success, and was proud that he hadn't booked them for Peel sessions in their early careers or played their records.

He was a lifelong passionate supporter of Liverpool Football club.

He was a DJ for BBC Radio 1 since it started in the late 1960s. He also presented the BBC Radio 4 magazine programme Home Truths from 1998 until his death.

As a young DJ working in Dallas, TX, he was admitted to the conference where Lee Harvey Oswald was presented to the press, shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Peel can be seen in archive footage).

His favorite song was "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones. After the announcement of his death, the song was played on the radio, and by many, many bands (who owe their careers at least partly to him) who had gigs that night.

I used to go and see Genesis, and after about three minutes I'd think, "Oh, I wish this would stop!".

Everything changed when I heard [Elvis Presley]. Where there had been nothing, there was suddenly something.

When I was younger I watched a lot of cartoons, mostly of seafaring folk.

I gave up cycling after being victim of a hit-and-run en route from Broadcasting House to my mum's house in Notting Hill. It involved Darth Vader, men from the Middle East and bodily fluids--all of them mine.

[on the music of the late 1960s] My favorite LP of that era, really, was and remains Country Joe's [Country Joe and the Fish] "Electric Music For The Mind And Body", and I couldn't understand why it wasn't in the charts, 'cos everybody I knew had a copy of it. But, of course, it was actually that everybody who had a copy of it was somebody that I knew.