Picture from John Peel Wiki
The enduring success of Top of the Pops has always depended, I reckon, on the fact that the title summed up entirely the programme's content. Good, bad or unspeakable, if it was popular, Top of the Pops gave it to you. Sometimes in the form of an enema. John Peel
Repeating Top of the Pops on BBC4 obviously seemed like a good idea at the time, especially as they started the run from 1976 when the BBC actually started to properly archive the show. What also made this a special experience at first was the fact that they broadcast the shows in real time, in the same way that Radio 2's Pick of the Pops still does, so the realism was there from the start. This was in 2011 (I think) and mixing the new and the old, Twitter played a huge part in making Top of the Pops as big an event as it was when it was Friday morning playground conversation, just with a bigger playground at our fingertips. Most of the conversations in the early days of course centred around how dull the music was, and will someone hurry up and invent punk rock before we all slip into a coma, but then just as it was getting watchable, Jimmy Savile happened. Before the 'revelations' that Savile was a massive rapist, BBC4 aired an episode which didn't edit out an appearance by Gary Glitter. I tweeted something along the lines of how terrifying it must have been for the kids in the audience having two paedophiles on the same show, quite a few people tweeted back to reprimand me for saying such a nasty and potentially libellous thing about a recently departed national treasure who raised millions of pounds for charity; choose your battles keyboard warriors.
This of course meant that the BBC had to have a sudden rethink and stopped broadcasting the shows presented by Savile, followed by shows presented by Dave Lee Travis. It must have been a tense few weeks at BBC4 as they wondered who else from the era was going to be picked off by Operation Yewtree but the gaps remained until now they show them on a regular basis with the gaps filled in which now means we are in 1982.
Radio One disc jockeys presented the show on a rota system, and one man stood out in the sea of 'wacky' showbiz types or careerist dicks with an eye on a daytime quiz show gig. That man was John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, or John Peel as he became better known. During the 1980s he put in shifts with Kid Jenson and Janice Long, but in tonight's repeat he was flying solo. Given how distinctively the opposite of the Smashie and Nicey image of a Radio One DJ, you might think that he would have been excused Top of the Pops duties, but every now and then he popped up and made absolutely no concession to how a late night DJ famed and lauded for playing music you didn't hear the shouty DJs play should behave on a pop music show aimed at a predominantly teenage audience. Instead he delivered his links like a sulky teenager with the words 'contractual obligation' hanging over him like a black cloud and his quotes have become part of his folklore.
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