The next big thing

You’re probably sick of reading about John Peel, the Radio One disc jockey who died of a heart attack last week and whose passing was marked with the solemn, exhaustive media coverage usually reserved for great statesmen. This was, after all, only a man who played records for a living.

Andy Kershaw, one of Peel’s protégés and a fellow DJ, went spectacularly over the top in the Independent. Peel, he said, was the ‘most important person in British music since the birth of rock’n’roll’. Come on, Andy, take a grip. More important than Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, David Bowie? It’s a bit like saying that John Heminges and Henry Condell, who oversaw the publication of the First Folio, were more important than Shakespeare, who wrote the plays it contained.

Nevertheless, in the week since I first heard the news of Peel’s death, I have found my thoughts repeatedly turning to him.