"I've never said fuck off to anybody because I just can't"

So, the only DJ I've ever cared about is dead. Legend is too small a word for John Peel.

To quote Billy Bragg in today's Guardian: "Although he became an institution at the BBC, he was, in effect, running his own pirate radio station from within the corporation".

I met him once, watching Godspeed! You Black Emperor at All Tomorrow's Parties in 2000. He was amiable, decent, patient - a thoroughly lovely bloke.

After all my carping on Monday about public displays of grief, someone passes away who deserves to be mourned by the whole nation. Peel's death puts into perspective last week's grotesque spectacle of the media beating themselves off into a masturbatory lather about that vicious narrow-minded bitch Lynda Lee-Potter.

On Excuse Me For Laughing, longtime SWSL friend and former colleague He Who Cannot Be Named mentions the time he interviewed Peel for an article. That feature - from June 2001, to explain some of the references - appears in its entirety below.

With the benefit of hindsight, the allusions to death come to seem prominent, and Peel comes across as a rather paranoid person, fearful and all too aware of his own mortality.

But I think it still stands as a fitting tribute, revealing for the most part a man who, despite having earnt the right to feel some pride in his considerable influence on British music, possessed not a shred of egotism but instead modesty in spades and a charmingly self-deprecating sense of humour.

RIP.

If I asked you to name national institutions, you could say Lloyds of London, the MCC or Radio 1. Then there’s the institution within Radio 1. John Peel. His night-time shows have guided the nation’s esoteric tastes since the station’s inception in 1967 and now he stands as the only survivor of a line-up that included such blazing mediocrities as Tony Blackburn. Now John Peel commands a respect that no other DJ can.

After a letter and a series of comical phone calls, I find myself in Radio 1 reception waiting for the man. The reception area is underwhelming. About the width of a run-of-the-mill garden shed, Chris the security guard is perched on a stool in what can only be described as a poncey corridor. I expected a grand courtyard and rolling carpet. When John finally arrives through the front door I expect a regal trumpet salute. Instead I hear the evil whine of Limp Bizkit’s ‘Rollin’ on the reception’s speakers.

I am then issued with a visitor pass and follow John to the main office, a wide open space rammed with autographed memorabilia and dishevelled stacks of promos. I think, ‘God I wish I was working here’. John then leads me down to his studio past a board adorned with press cuttings entitled ‘Filth On Radio 1 In The Papers’ and a 5ft picture of Sara Cox’s visage.

In the immaculate and somewhat sterile studio, John is effusive and self-deprecating. Welcoming and just plain nice. When I say that I’ve heard someone else who had interviewed him had sat in on his programme and was politely told to leave because John was getting paranoid, he protests. “That doesn’t sound like me. Not unless he was flossing with a switchblade. I often meet people who say, ‘I’ve met that bloke you said fuck off to’, and I say I’ve never said fuck off to anybody because I just can’t.”

John’s laconic tones have infected the media for so long that some people have forgotten that he still does his Radio 1 show. But he has survived. Is he surprised? “If I said no that would sound a bit conceited and if I said yes that would sound like false modesty so I don’t really know. I think one of the reasons why I’ve survived is because I don’t have any ambitions to do anything else. I’ve never wanted to get into TV or anything. Well, not in a serious way.”

I suggest that the powers that be think he is irreplaceable. “It would be madness to assume that. A lot of people have made that assumption and have found out they were wrong, and I never believe that for a minute because if you do you stop trying to get things right. It would be a serious error of judgement to believe that.”

His show has maintained its cult credentials and devoted audience and John is proud to say that he’s old enough to be a grandfather to some listeners. This is despite the fact that John admits to not reading the music press. “By and large they don’t seem to be writing about the things that I like”, he says. John claims they seem to be more locked into what is on Steve Lamacq’s show, whilst his own 10 o’clock show instead extols the virtues of the arch-obscurist. He recounts a tale of when he took a record he thought was wonderful to his school’s jazz club. “It was this elitist knobhead organisation and they just laughed at it and the more they laughed, the more I thought I was right and they were wrong. I thought: ‘You bastards have completely missed the point.’”

It’s an anecdote with stunning relevance when you realise John caters for the audience that doesn’t want the conventional, an audience that wants something different. However, criticisms that he sometimes plays a pile of crap may be valid. He says: “I reserve the right to be wrong. I don’t say my shows are infallible. If I live for another ten years I might think back: ‘What the hell was I listening to?’”

I then enquire whether he is afraid of being too ubiquitous. In one week I had listened to his show, seen him talk of Liverpool FC’s European glory on TV, congratulate Amnesty International on their work, host the Royal Festival Hall’s 50th birthday gig and do countless advert voiceovers. “I don’t think I am. I always say if you look at the number of years I’ve been doing Radio 1, you can either see it as passionate dedication to public service broadcasting or a shocking lack of ambition. It’s the same thing but it depends on your perspective. I think it’s a consequence of doing the same thing for a long time and being reasonably approachable. When they’re looking for someone to talk about Liverpool, they don’t have many showbiz supporters for which I’m always very grateful so people say, ‘We’ll have to talk to Peel again.’”

He admits that he does the voiceovers because he has to put three kids through university. However, contrary to popular belief, he does turn them down. “Oh good Lord. I walked out of one today because it had a line in it – I won’t say what it was – but it was something I strongly disapproved of and I said, ‘Sorry but I’m not going to read that.’”

John also gets emotional. When he received the NME Godlike Genius Award in 1994 he started doing a Niagara Falls. “I cry far too easily. I wanted to make a speech about my wife but I broke down and made a bit of an arse of myself.” He also gets bleary-eyed over the recent success of his beloved Liverpool football team. “I couldn’t bare to watch the cup games and the FA Cup. I went for a six mile walk. When it kicked off I started walking and I took my mobile phone. When the match was over Sheila, my wife, phoned me and said they won 2-1. I burst into floods of tears in the middle of the road and my daughter came over and collected me and we had a celebratory drink. I just get too wound up and think I’m going to drop dead.”

The guiding light is his family and especially Sheila. On his ring finger is a wedding band with a silver pig coiled upon it. As listeners to his show may well know, he affectionately nicknames her The Pig. John states his weaknesses as being red wine, Indian food and family. “I’d sooner spend a day with my wife than a day doing anything else. You could say it’s a weakness but I would say it’s a strength.”

However, there has been trouble in marital paradise. Over the matter of beard shaving. “When I last shaved it off, my wife was so furious she told me I wasn’t to leave the house until I’d grown it back. But it was a bit of a shock because I’d had it for 16 or 17 years and I’d expected the same bloke to emerge from behind it. Strange thing is if you haven’t shaved for a long time there’s a bloke in the mirror you’ve never seen before and it’s a really unnerving experience. I looked like a fusion of Mussolini and my mother.”

John is a victim of the middle-aged spread. Once asked if there was anybody he’d like to look like, he said, “Anybody thin.” His tone is almost mournful when he talks about it. “You see yourself in the mirror and think ‘Oh my God, look at the state of that’. Obviously I suppose if I went on some sort of Geri Halliwell diet I could probably lose weight but then I’d probably die as well.”

Like I said, self-deprecating. However, he remains an iconic figure. When I ask whether the title ‘the most important figure in popular music for the past 25 years’, as proposed by his friend John Walters, haunts him, he shrugs. “It’s just something he said in the course of an interview like this when you’re struggling to find expression for something you’ve not thought about terribly deeply. You can’t quantify these things.” John cheerfully admits he has no idea what is in the charts and he has no doubt benefited from not being exposed to the horrific knowledge of the existence of DJ Pied Piper and MCs or Allstars. For now the show will go on, but first Britain’s greatest living DJ has to contend with the nadir of his summer. “I think Wimbledon is the real low point in the year. I don’t like tennis. Playing it I don’t object to but as a spectator I find it most irritating. Thank God the football season is starting fairly soon.”

A selection of well-worded blog tributes: Auspicious Fish, Parallax View, Casino Avenue, Underground Base Of An Evil Genius, Alex McChesney Dot Com, Amblongus, No Rock & Roll Fun, Wherever You Are, Danger! High Postage

No Rock & Roll Fun has a whole load more links here.