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John Peel Wiki
in: 1990, Peel shows, Available online,
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30 December 1990

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Show[]

Name
Station
YYYY-MM-DD
  • 1990-12-30
Comments
  • The final part of the 1990 Festive Fifty, together with session repeats and JP's favourite records of the year.
  • This show finds JP in garrulous mood, and a generous portion of his chat is reproduced below.

Sessions[]

Tracklisting[]

(JP: 'Oddly enough, Eric Clapton did a song called 'Catweazle' when he was a member of Cream, but it wasn't that one.') [1]
  • Rhythmatic: 'Demons (10 inch)' (0742)
(JP: 'Sorry, I was so busy tapping me toes to that, I missed the end of it...I always feel terribly envious when Andy (Kershaw) says stuff like, very casually just drops into the programme, I hope you've noticed that, "Oh yes, I was at Cropover in Barbados", and I think, "I've never been to Cropover in Barbados, never been to Barbados". Mind you, I did go to Islington last weekend to see Heavenly.')
(JP: 'When I played the dub of that in last night's programme, somebody rang up to complain! I was rather hurt by that.')
(JP: 'It's a curious thing, you know, very childish this, but for weeks and weeks, when I type up the running orders for these programmes, because that's one of the little jobs that falls my way, when I'm typing, instead of putting 'one, two, three, four, five, six' at the top of the pages, I make up what I imagine to be some kind of sort of typical European numbers and things, and type them up there instead, and nobody's ever questioned it at all, and said, "What language are these things in, or indeed what do they mean?". So this week it's been 'ween, zor, driv, vor, flev' and 'zoks'. They probably think, poor twerp can't spell.')
  • Mind Body 'N Soul: 'White Rabbit' (white label)
(JP: 'Do you ever find yourself wearing T-shirts with messages on them that are completely incomprehensible to you? For the last couple of days, I've been wearing a T-shirt which is now I'm afraid rather grubby, which has got 'This Yabbis' written on it, many many times in fact. I can't remember at all where it came from or what it means. What is a Yabbis?') [2]
(JP: 'Chesterfield looms very large in my domestic mythology because I once conducted one of those kind of celebrity auctions in Chesterfield, at a girl's school. I thought we were all going to become great friends, but they never got in touch with me again. I bought myself a book for £2, an autographed book that Tony Bennett had written, almost unreadable, I have to admit, but quite pleased that I got it nevertheless. It was there that I discovered that one of my pictures, no four of my pictures, autographed Radio 1 style publicity pictures, was worth one Mike Read picture, so I now know exactly how much mine is worth financially, because the Mike Read autographed picture that came up in the auction I did in Chesterfield went for 13p. So I know that one of mine is worth a quarter of whatever 13p is: not a lot. So when people write and say, "Can we have an autographed picture of you in our celebrity auction?", I'll say, "You've already lost money by putting a stamp on the envelope."')

1990 Festive Fifty: Numbers 14-01[]

(JP: 'I'd like to thank the people who did all the computering for me, and thereby saved me spending hours in front of the fire entering it in a huge logbook with a quill pen as I usually do, in a rather Dickensian fashion, so my thanks to John Sentence and the girls of Down House, particularly the Upper Fourth and Lower Fifth, and the people in the computer department, most especially Rosie Wintell and Patsy Patterson.')
(JP: 'Certainly as good a record as has been made in 1990.')
(JP: 'Before I play you the number 10 track, I've got a little yellow cut-out elephant, you know the type of thing, that people write notes on and so on, which I've been carrying around with me for quite some time. It says, "Hi, my name's Clara, I'm 14, from Moseley in Birmingham. This is a dumb letter, in fact I don't even know why I'm writing it, because it's not like I have contacts with a band and can get special stuff for you: I don't even know anyone else who listens to your programme. I can't even phone up on the fluff line because my mum and stepdad would kill me. You'll probably chuck this letter in the bin, or ignore it completely. Oh well, it's tough being 14." I know it is, Clara: this is for you.')
  • 10: Orb, 'Loving You' (Peel Session) [3]
(JP: 'You can see now why I had to reorganise all the timings of things, with a twenty minute and ten second track in the Festive Fifty. All of my original calculations had to go out of the window.')
(JP: 'If our William had voted in the Festive Fifty, I think he'd have voted for this.')
(JP: 'A record to be proud of, that, I think. Never fails to give satisfaction.')
(JP: 'It's obvious that not the entire nation is caught up with the Festive Fifty, because someone was just on the phone to ask me whether Carly Simon had ever recorded 'MacArthur Park', and I have to admit that I don't know the answer to that. [4] This is number three, and it's not Carly Simon.')
(JP: 'A cert for the top five in the Festive Fifty, I thought when I first heard that, and I was right. Actually, I could have made that up, but I didn't.')
(JP: 'I reckon that the last two tracks were certain for the top five of the Festive Fifty, as I said before, but I never reckoned the winner would be the winner. It was a very very close thing between one and two: in fact, if it hadn't been for one sort of semi-spoiled ballot, the two would have been the other way round. But in the end, this came out as number one, and a great surprise to me.')
(JP: 'Well, to me a major surprise. Obviously, I'm quite happy to see it.')


(JP: 'Happy New Year to all of you.')
Tracks marked # available on File 6

File[]

Name
Length
  • 1) 01:01:10
  • 2) 00:45:41
  • 3) 00:43:05
  • 4) 00:29:00
  • 5) 02:59:38
  • 6) 1:18:31 (from )
Other
  • 1-4) Good quality, though rather subdued at the very start.
  • 5) Complete show in good sound quality. Thanks to Ray b
  • 6) Excellent quality. Created from tapes SB848, SB849 and SB850 of Weatherman22's Tapes
  • Part of this show is also available in the 'Festive 50s' folder of IAP's Tapes in substantially improved sound quality. The relevant files are:
F50_1990_0901 (Numbers 10-03)
F50_1990_0901b (Number 02 to end of show).
Available
Footnotes
  1. ↑ JP's memory is at fault here: the song is actually called 'Cat's Squirrel' and can be found on the LP Fresh Cream.
  2. ↑ He later discovers they are a band from Leicester.
  3. ↑ This later became known as 'A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld'. Although the session this comes from was actually recorded on 1989-12-03 and first transmitted on 19 December 1989, this was too late for it to be voted for in the previous year's chart.
  4. ↑ Just for the record, she didn't.
  5. ↑ For some reason, this song is consistently referred to by Peel throughout the Festive Fifty as 'Weather'.
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