Friday Night Is Boogie Night

"Bill Aitken had an unusual role to play in the Sounds Of The Seventies legend. For Peel's new Friday night show, '(John) Muir was daft enough to ask me to write some jingles...Radio 1 took over the FM slot at this time from Radio 2, and if you didn't know where you were on the dial at home, you could be tuning in to the wrong station,' he says. 'To capitalise on this, the jingle began with Peter Howell (of the Radiophonic Workshop) saying in a very BBC voice, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Friday Night Is Boogie Night!,' (polite applause) then I would crash in, sounding like a Glasgow drunk doing a pale imitation of Little Richard to the tune of Keep A-Knockin', except that the words were, 'Get your boogie on a Friday night, Auntie Beeb's gonna treat you right, Johnny Peel's really out of sight, Boogie on a Friday and you'll be alright!' Aitken had found a vocation. He followed up with the 'John Peel's Got Nice Legs' jingle, but the Boogie Night jingle remains the most memorable. It was also appropriate: the show featured the first session by the 12-bar boogie incarnation of Status Quo, on 3 March 1972. (Ken Garner, The Peel Sessions, BBC Books 2007, p.77.)"

The oddly-named Friday night Peel show, produced by John Muir, was intended to supplement Top Gear: it ran on BBC Radio One from 07 January 1972 to 27 September 1972, when it moved to Thursday and shifted producer duties to Bernie Andrews. As with most Peel shows of this era, few recordings survive: the ones that do are documented on this site.