Tom Ravenscroft

Thomas James Dalglish Ravenscroft (born 6th Feb 1980) is one of John Peel's two sons and a radio presenter who currently hosts his own show on BBC 6 Music.

Like his siblings, he went to Coombs Middle School and to university, where Tom was studying at Sheffield. Tom's middle name reflects his father's love of Liverpool football club. In later years, Peel's own shows occasionally featured one of 'Tom's Tips', brought to his attention by the young music fan.

Tom has also followed in his father's footsteps by branching out into journalism, writing a column for The Times and a blog for the magazine New Statesman. In one blog entry he expressed his enthusiasm for an artist who was one of his father's favourites, John Fahey.

Links to Peel Shows
The list comes from the database of this site and is incomplete. Please add further information if known.

1979
 * 08 October 1979: Peel suggests that Briony might be a good name if the "impending Thomas" turns out to be a girl

1980 1982
 * 06 February 1980:  Mike Read fills in for Peel on tonight's programme. Peel is otherwise indisposed with the birth of his son Tom!
 * 11 February 1980: Peel thanks senders of cards to welcome newly arrived son Thomas James Dalglish into the world.

1989 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
 * 07 August 1982 : (JP: 'My real name isn't actually John Peel at all. This was wished on me quite a few years ago by a secretary working for the pirate radio ship Radio London, and I was desperate for work at the time, so I wasn't going to argue with them. If I'd have been there a few months earlier, I'd have been called Mark Roman, so I had a fairly narrow escape. So John Peel it was. My real name's John Ravenscroft, and in fact I've got a son called Thomas Ravenscroft, and this is a record of a piece by a Thomas Ravenscroft. Not my son, cos he's only two. This was written in the early 15th century.')
 * 10 April 1989: (JP: "I did actually go to a football match for the first time since the Heysel Stadium. And it was a local match, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, wondering around in the sunshine with our Thomas and having a beer at half time and talking to one or two people. There weren't that many people there. Fifty, I'd have said, 60 maybe. Stowmarket against Histon, 1-1 draw, with Stowmarket equalizing on their home ground in the one minute of injury time, and a great goal it was too. And I shall most assuredly go again too.")
 * 17 October 1989: Several tracks are played from the Devil's Jukebox singles box set from Blast First label, including one by the band Arsenal. Peel says he had never been sent any of their previous work and claims he was only persuaded to play the record by son Thomas, who told him his reluctance to do this was childish. Peel had a strong dislike for Arsenal football team.
 * 24 December 1989 (BBC Radio East Anglia): (Chat with son Thomas, followed by a track played for him.) Four Brothers, 'Pasi Pano Pane Zviedzo (Compilation LP-Makorokoto)'
 * 06 January 1991: (Link by Peel's son: 'This is Thomas. What's in tonight's programme, Daddy?')
 * 19 May 1991: (JP: I was on round table earliier this week, on Friday, along with Peter Hooton, and Carol out of T'Pau, and also my son Tom made one or two contributions to the programme. The rest of us rather liked this next record, Tom wasn't too terrifically keen.) The record was the Orb - Perpetual Dawn.
 * 15 February 1992:  John mentions that our Tom has been allowed to go and see the Wedding Present in Cambridge as a birthday treat.
 * 02 May 1992: (JP: 'I was just hearing actually on the phone of jubilation at Portman Road, Ipswich, this afternoon - last match of the season, of course. Elements of my family were there, Sheila, my wife, and our Tom were there and took part in a pitch invasion which I think nobody seemed to object to... Pretty exciting stuff. I wish I'd been there myself to be perfectly honest.')
 * 04 September 1992: (JP: 'On the Saturday at Reading, I was unable to get along to the tent at all because the whole of the backstage area was so jammed with people pretending to be NME and Melody Maker journalists that you couldn't really fight your way through them. But our Thomas, even before he got to Reading, in fact for weeks before, was saying that the thing he was looking forward to most was Shonen Knife. Where he got this from I simply don't know at all, but this is what he was after, and after he had seen them, he pronounced himself well-satisfied with them. So, Tom, if you're listening, this is a record by Shonen Knife, and you ought to be asleep by now.')
 * 04 September 1992: (JP: 'And Teenage Fanclub followed, they went down pretty well. I didn't see much of their set, but our son Thomas said they were pretty good again.')
 * 04 September 1992: (JP: 'Briefly back to the Reading Festival...Of course, top of the bill were Nirvana. I managed to get my son Thomas and my daughter Alexandra on to the stage with her mates, so that they were sort of, they could see everything that was going on on the stage, and then when the band went off, to kind of regroup or do anything at all, they had to come and stand by where they were sitting. Obviously, they were very pleased to be in that position. Afterwards, I was hoping they were going to say, "Kurt turned round and said something really interesting", or passed on some bit of gossip. In fact what they were saying was, "Oh, he winked at me", or, "he trod on my foot", so they were more impressed by the status of the artistes than anything else. The 90-minute set sounded pretty good to me. Kurt didn't look particularly fit, but then at the same time, what had been written about him in the papers and the tabloids and things didn't seem to be evidence of it anyway.')
 * Chain Reaction: John Peel Interviews Ian Rush (Transcript):  (JP: My name is John Peel and since I was about seven or eight years old I’ve been a Liverpool supporter. And meet lots of Liverpool supporters who have never been to Liverpool and probably couldn’t find it on the map. But my dad worked there, the family business was there, and I worked there briefly myself, and lived just across the river. So I grew up with Liverpool and my earliest memories are of being beaten 2-0 by Arsenal in the cup final in 1950, for which I’ve never forgiven Arsenal really. And I can remember when they [Liverpool] were in the Second Division, which is when I was doing my national service. And I think 16th was the lowest that they sank at that time, and it was a bad time for me, no question about it. And then I moved out to live near Ipswich and had a family, and all of the children have got Liverpool associations in their names. Like William, who is 16 and not interested in football at all – in fact, actively dislikes it – is called William Robert Anfield. And my daughter Alexandra is Alexander Mary Anfield. Thomas, who is 12 and he is the only one who shows any signs of being good at football, is Thomas James Dalglish. And Florence is 10, and she is Florence Victoria Shankly. And I have always said, and this is true, that if we had a fifth child, the name Rush would come into it. So when I was asked to interview someone who I would wish to interview, I asked Ian Rush to come down, and he has done this. So cheers, Ian.) 
 * 19 December 1992: (JP: 'This is Tom's choice.') Tom chose The Fall - Big New Prinz as his favourite record.
 * 25 December 1992: Ministry: 'The TV Song (7"- Jesus Built My Hotrod)' 1992 Festive Fifty #03 (JP: 'That record is so astonishingly Thomas it's hardly possible.)
 * 01 January 1993: (JP: 'Our Thomas developed a bit of an appetite, as a consequence of hearing parts of these programmes, for doo-wop. So, if he's still awake, which he certainly shouldn't be, he could well fancy this.')
 * 06 February 1993 and 21 February 1993 (BFBS): Peel plays a record featuring Combs Middle School Students ft Tom Ravenscroft: Humbug 1(JP - And if you think it's indulgent of me to play a record because it mentions my name, you've not heard anything yet, because I'm about to play you a track featuring my son Thomas, who was 13 today actually)
 * 14 May 1993: (JP: ‘Our Tom is in Normandy on a school trip and he might just be able to hear this programme. If you’re listening Tom here’s one’s for you.’) The record is Ford: '33% (7 Inch - Friendly)'
 * 15 May 1993: (JP: ‘.. again for my son Thomas if he’s listening to his dad’s programme in Normandy - which he probably isn’t’.)
 * 22 May 1993: John dedicates the PJ Harvey session to his son Tom.
 * 27 August 1993: Tom makes a cameo appearance.
 * 25 December 1993: PJ Harvey, 'Rid Of Me (CD-Rid Of Me)' (Island) 1993 Festive Fifty #04  (JP: 'Our Thomas does a really good imitation of the last ten to fifteen seconds of that. I like to think she's barely got started yet.')
 * 09 April 1994 (BFBS): (JP - "I've been listening to the new Madder Rose LP, they're great favourites in our house, particularly with our Thomas, but he admitted, or agreed with me that the current single was a little disappointing. A bit clinical, a little over-produced, perhaps, a little neat, it does happen to you when you get involved with major labels. I've nothing against major labels per se, I mean a lot of people who run Indie labels are pretty disagreeable folk! But at the same time, there does seem to be a kind of cleansing process that bands go through, the result of that the things they produce really don't have that kind of edge which they had previously. But nevertheless, having said that, there are some tracks from the Madder Rose LP which are worth hearing, he said patronisingly.)
 * 11 November 1994: Down Pike's
 * 26 November 1994 (BFBS): (JP: 'I apologise if this programme hasn't been up to the usual extraordinarily high standards of John Peel's Music On BFBS. I know it's a bad workman always blames his tools, but there have been one or two slight problems with the studio, starting with having to move to a completely different studio before we even got going. But hopefully the music will have been fine, even if I've been slightly substandard. This next track is going to cheer me up a little bit. It's grotesquely self-indulgent to include it in the programme, I know that, but I'm not making any apologies for it nevertheless. It's just that our son Thomas had to record something for some exam at school, I rather lose track of these things. So he (?) a kind of multi-layered guitar thing 'cos he sits in his bedroom and plays guitar extraordinarily loud a lot of the time, which is quite nice to hear most of the time, to be perfectly honest with you. And his elder brother having played saxophone and keyboards and stuff before him but then given it up, I keep rather hoping that Tom won't, and I think actually he probably will not. So he'd recorded this piece, and I said to him, "Tom, can I have a tape of that?" and he said, "Yeah, what do you want it for?" I said, "Well actually I'd quite like to play it on the radio." He said, "Oh for heaven's sake Dad, it'd be really embarrassing, and it's no good" and all this kind of stuff. I took a tape of it anyway and played it on Radio 1, and at least the engineer said, "That's really good." I think it's really good, but then I'm a daft dad. The point is too that Tom didn't have a title for it, and he said, "Would you choose a title for it?" So I thought about it for a while, and because there's a place in Stowmarket where we live called Pike's Meadow which is where we all go and hang out all of the time, the answer to every second or third question you ask of me is, "Down Pike's."....So 'Down Pike's' seemed to be an appropriate title for Tom's piece.') Thomas Ravenscroft: 'Down Pike's' (tape)
 * 03 December 1994 (BFBS): (JP: 'I had to write a piece for the Guardian about instrumental music over the years. It was one of those things which I kind of quite enjoy doing, except I was at a great disadvantage, sitting there at the table at home surrounded by piles of records...but I suddenly realised when I sat down to write out the fair copy that I don't know anything about guitars! It's like cars: I love cars, and if I was like really wealthy, I'd have a very fast and dangerous car in which I'd kill myself almost instantly, probably, but fortunately I'm never likely to reach the stage where I can actually afford to do that. But I love the look of cars, and old cars in particular, but I have no idea at all what makes them work. I'm not interested: that's somebody else's responsibility, you see. It's the same with guitars. I love the noise they make, but exactly how they make it, well frankly, I don't know....I had to wait for our Thomas, aged 14, to come home and explain exactly how an electric guitar works so that I could finish writing this piece. So it was a labour of love, a family piece by and large with Thomas' input into it, and, well, they haven't printed it. Isn't that life, eh?')
 * 09 June 1995: (JP: 'I have to admit, I feel rather nervous about this programme, because it comes to you live and direct from Peel Acres, and our studio isn't exactly soundproof, I have to admit: it's more of a prepared corner than a studio, so you may hear the occasional extraneous noise, like a car going by on the road outside, or dogs barking, or one of the children falling downstairs or something, or most likely of all, actually, our Tom playing happy hardcore in his bedroom at the other end of the house. But hopefully there won't be too many distractions for you...This isn't some kind of Noel Edmonds fantasy either, I want you to know that.')
 * 23 June 1995: Son Tom turns up to introduce "Tom's Tip" but then leaves while it is being played. Tom's Tip was T-119: The Bambam Track (LP - The New Sound Of The East Coast: Jungle USA)
 * 05 August 1995 (BFBS): (JP: 'My son Tom told me a few months ago that the school where he goes in Stowmarket, all the graffiti on the walls isn't sort of Oasis or Pulp or anything, neither is it Take That, but all the graffiti is in favour of a chap named (DJ Slipmatt).')
 * 27 January 1996: (JP: ‘Here’s Tom’s tip for this afternoon. Very fast says Tom. And he’s right’. John then starts the record at 33 rpm rather than the correct speed of 45 rpm.) ' The record is Northern Connexion: ‘Reel Funk [Bennies Revenge] Remixed By Benny Blanco (12 inch – Remember Me )’
 * 23 February 1996:  (JP: ‘And this is another Tom’s tip.’) The record is DJ Dano & Liza N Eliaz: ‘Starting Up (12 inch – Pawlow )’
 * 02 March 1996 (BFBS): (JP: 'Our Tom has been too busy recently to pick out any records for me to play on the radio in his Tom's Tip feature. Because he's just become 16 and has now got some kind of Kawasaki 50, and he and his mate Nick whizz about all over the area terrorising people on these things...but he did have time to listen to a couple of records, and chose this.) The record was Dead Dred: 'Come On Baby (12")' (Moving Shadow)
 * 19 February 1997: Del Lagunas: 'Exotic (7 inch)' (Sympathy For The Record Industry) (JP:'My son Thomas likes his music very very fast and very very loud, and although he didn't make this one one of his Tom's Tips because I didn't let him get his hands on it, because once they disappear into his bedroom, they often don't reappear for months, but I think he would approve of it.').
 * 23 December 1997:  (JP: 'I asked our son Thomas what his favourite record of the year was, and he said he hadn't heard a decent record for two years. But then to my surprise nominated this.') 
 * Ash: 'A Life Less Ordinary (CD single)' (Infectious) Thomas Ravenscroft (DJ's son)
 * 20 August 1998: (JP: I hope that those of you who've been agonising over the past few days about A Level results, obviously I hope that you got the results you want. We have in our house, so there's a certain amount of celebration there ... very proud of our Tom, who actually exceeded his own expectations.")
 * 01 June 1999: (Son Tom has given JP the first 'Tom's Tip' for a couple of years - and the record follows) Kraken: 'Side Effects (12 inch - Blazin Sampler )’
 * 23 December 1999: (JP: 'A certain amount of confusion in the house because our Tom's girlfriend Ellie has just made some mince pies, and champagne's arrived, and how much we wish you could be with us, listeners. That is true: obviously, one or two of you we wouldn't get on with, but the bulk I suspect we might.')
 * 20 September 2000: (JP: This next is a wonderful set and I have 3 copies of it and I am going to send one of them to our Tom at university and another to our William at home in the far north of England and it’s a set called Ram Raiders Pt.1) Shimon & Moving Fusion: Hangman (EP: (3 x12") Ram Raiders Pt.1)
 * 22 March 2001 (Radio Eins): (JP - 'Last week I was up in Sheffield, because that's where my son Tom is at university. And he recommended a record shop to me that I'd never been into before, although it was quite close to an Indian, no not and Indian, and African restaurant, that I've been in once, which was utterly wonderful, but I went along to this record shop on Tom's recommendation, and I'd been in there about quarter an hour, and a fella came over and said, "do you recognise me?" and of course I said, " well I don't think I do" and it turned out to be a fella called Barry Everard, and Barry came to my wife and I's wedding, twenty and how many years ago it was, and I hadn't seen him since then. He'd been running this record shop all of this time, and it was an excellent record shop, it has to be said. And one of the members of his staff, hang on wait until I make sure I play the right track - has made a CD under the name of I Monster, called These Are Our Children. And from it, a track called French Mods Can't Drink. And as to the veracity of that statement, I can't possibly comment.'.)
 * 10 July 2001: Ash: Teenage Kicks (live) (CD Single) (JP: 'Our Tom recommended this, and he's right to do so.')
 * 23 August 2001: Disappointment that Tom and Flossie fail to bring any Elvis impersonators back from the local pub. Apparently there had been nine of them.
 * 03 October 2001: Peel is wildly enthusiastic about his Japanese session guests Melt Banana. Says he tried to persuade all his family to come down to see them, but only Tom was able to make it.
 * 24 October 2001: Son Tom has recommended the DJ Teebee track: “It is a good track, you’re right, Tom.”
 * 21 May 2002:   JP’s son Tom has recommended the Universal Project track.

Links

 * WikipediaA Short Film About Vinyl - You Need To Hear This-0
 * BBC 6 Music: Tom Ravenscroft
 * Tom Ravenscroft profile on Wise Buddah
 * Channel 4 slashmusic podcasts 2006-7
 * Channel 4 new music podcasts 20008