Peel appeal

So I didn’t listen to Peel much after 1976. But the fifth anniversary of his death has made me feel more kindly disposed towards the man. It has been marked by a fine new four-CD set of some of his favourite singles and Peel-show sessions called Kats Karavan, named after his radio show on WRR-AM in Dallas, where he began his career as a DJ in 1959. Unfortunately, this collection doesn’t go back quite that far, beginning with the classic 1966 psychedelic single ‘I Can Take You to the Sun’ by the Misunderstood, a band Peel briefly managed. It then chronicles his long career with the BBC, with occasional endearing archival announcements from the great man himself, and though there are some rebarbative moments — I challenge anyone to listen to ‘There Goes Concorde Again’ by And the Native Hipsters without feeling physically and mentally ill — there is a host of good stuff here, from Traffic and Sandy Denny to Laura Cantrell and Mercury Rev.

Even better value, however, is an album I somehow missed on its release in 2006 called The Pig’s Big 78s (still available on Amazon) featuring some of the old shellac discs Peel used to collect and play as a novelty item on his show in later years. The Pig of course was his wife Sheila, a nickname that had nothing to do with her looks (she was and is very beautiful) but the snorting noise she made when she laughed.

There is a wonderful mixture of music, old variety acts and novelty discs here, including an ancient brass band, delta blues, Dixieland jazz and early rock and roll. Listen out, too, for Freddy Dosh, who does astonishing vocal impressions of quacking ducks and crying babies, the yodelling whistler Ronnie Ronalde, and a 1908 music hall number, ‘John, John, Put Your Trousers On’ in which a giggling bride tries in vain to dissuade her intended from wearing a kilt at their wedding.

These records suggest a man who loved the old as well as the new, and someone with a tremendous appetite for the comic, the quirky, the charming and the downright bonkers. I just wish the BBC had persuaded him to present regular shows crammed full of old 78s rather than all that dodgy modern stuff before death led Peel away to the great jukebox in the sky.

Charles Spencer is theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.