I am made to laugh until I squirt by John Peel

I was sent this this morning by my friend Louis, who is reading a copy of John Peel's autobiography (found in Oxfam).

It made me extremely happy. I hope you enjoy it too.



In answer to the question "how did you feel about the music of the early ‘70s?", he replied:


“Well, when you look at that period, the only bands that got signed up were bands that contained at least one member of a previously successful band that had broken up, and almost the only new band that came through during the whole of that time was Roxy Music, so that’s why when punk came along, it was such a welcome breath of foul air, because you hadn’t realised how bored you’d been.

For instance, round about 1975, the controller of Radio 1, who was very much into motor racing, took us to Mallory Park. It was a regular race meeting, but there was a Radio 1 dimension to it. There’s a huge lake that takes up much of the area in the middle of the track, and right on the edge of the lake there’s a couple of small islands, and they’d set up a mock medieval tent on the bigger of the two islands and this is where the élite went, and you could only get to it from a footbridge guarded by security people. Slade were there, and the Bay city Rollers were also there. I was there too, standing outside the hospitality tent talking to my fellow DJ Johnny Walker.

Cars were hurtling around the track, and all these Rollers fans were dashing across, even during races I think, because the Bay City Rollers had been brought in by helicopter and were standing on top of this observation platform, waving to the fans on the other side of the road. The fans would run across the track, then down to the edge of the lagoon, and they’d see the Bay City Rollers about 20 yards away across this muddy water, reeds and stuff. Of course, these girls were all wearing Bay City Rollers chic – which wasn’t flattering – and they started wading through the water to get to their heroes.

The only security on the island – and it seems barely credible – was provided by the BBC Sub-Aqua Club. So you’ve got all these people in frogman outfits with flippers and goggles standing on the bank, catching these girls, carrying them back through the mud and depositing them on the other bank, where they’d just turn round and come back again. But Noddy Holder (of Slade, who had enjoyed an unbroken string of hits throughout the early 70s) went over the bridge and walked through this crowd and they paid no attention to him at all. He must have thought at that moment: “This is where it all ends.”

So helicopters are going backwards and forwards, all these girls are struggling through the water and there’s frogmen hopping about. I turned away, just in time to see on the main part of the lagoon, Tony Blackburn is hurtling across the water, waving to the crowds, in a speedboat driven by a Womble. I turned to Johnny and said, “Mark this well, because we‘ll never see the likes of it again.”