This was Peel's first show since learning of the death of former producer and friend John Walters.
The previous evening, John, Sheila, Thomas and Flossie had gone out for a meal in Bury St Edmunds and had purchased "a bottle of cheap house champagne to toast Walters because we felt that that's what he would have approved of our doing."
Introducing the last song in the show, John poignantly reveals that Walters had planned to play Roy Harper's song at some point during Peel's funeral service.
Session[]
Lift To Experience, #1 (repeat). Recorded 2001-04-15. No known commercial release.
(JP: 'That was Ken Colyer and his Jazzmen from an EP that I bought when I was 14 years old. John Walters, who produced this programme for more than 20 years and who died the night before last, bought the same EP.')
Joseph Nothing: Exoticmanwalking (LP - Tigerbeat6 Inc.) Tigerbeat6
(JP: 'For those people who said that perhaps I should not have done tonight's programme, I think he would have thought it was a bit weedy of me not to do it.')
Panoptica: El Chivero de Tepatoche (LP - Panoptica 1234) Certificate 18
Pulseprogramming: Will You Ever Have Enough Light (LP - Pulseprogramming) Aesthetics
(JP: 'I have to say that I always expected that John Walters, despite his illness, to outlive me because he was absolutely determined be at my funeral in order to deliver the eulogy which would have been enormously long, very funny and I suspect would have reflected a great deal of credit on him and not nearly so much on me. One of the things that he was determined to do was to play, at some stage of the ceremony, Roy Harper's "When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease" . I'm sorry that you didn't have the much longer innings you deserved, old pal.')