The cover of Peel's autobiography - Margrave of the Marshes.Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular 'Peel sessions', which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist live in the BBC's studios, and which often provided the first major national coverage to bands that later would achieve great fame. Another popular feature of his shows was the annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year. Peel appeared frequently on British television, as one of the presenters of Top of the Pops in the 1980s, and he provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his Home Truths programme which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives.
Peel was born in Heswall Cottage Hospital in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool, and grew up in the nearby village of Burton.[1] His father was an upper middle class cotton merchant,[2] and he was sent away to be educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School.[3] His housemaster, R H J Brooke, whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive", wrote on one of his school reports, "Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays."[4] In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel revealed that he had been raped by an older pupil while at Shrewsbury.[5]
After finishing his National Service in 1959 in the Royal Artillery as a B2 Radar Operator,[6] he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill in Rochdale[7] and travelled home each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. Whilst in Rochdale Monday to Friday he stayed in a bed and breakfast in the Milkstone Road/Drake Street area.
