John Peel Wiki

Changes to the look of John Peel Wiki will take place in the near future due to a new skin being rolled out over Oct/Nov across Wikia. Please see the Wikia Staff Blog for further details. On this site, the changes will affect the navigation from the left menu, as well as introduce a fixed page width with narrower content space. Please be patient while adjustments are made for the switch to the new system.

UPDATE: As the change is now in force for some users, I have switched the navigation to the simplified one for the new system. Please check Navigation in the Help section if you can't find things. I also initially made small adjustments to the front page layout, but have now reverted to the old look until all users are on the new system.

COUNTDOWN: Just a reminder for people still using Monaco that the final switch to the new skin is due on Nov. 3. After that, it will no longer be offered as an option. Sorry. Nothing to do with me.

Steve W

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John Peel Wiki
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in: Lists, Discography, Top Gear

Disinterred Thirty-Three and a Third

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When John Walters took over from Bernie Andrews as Peel's producer on Top Gear in April 1969, he brought some ideas of his own to the show. Among them was the inclusion of tracks from the mid-1960s British beat and R&B era, some of them by groups whose members went on to join bands who did sessions for Peel's programmes. (Walters would have known some of them personally from his time on the road as a member of the Alan Price Set.) This idea developed into the Disinterred Thirty-Three and a Third spot on Top Gear in 1969-70, where Peel (with an accompanying spoof jingle) would announce a vintage track, usually from an LP. It may have been JP (or John Walters)'s ironic take on the more familiar "Revived Forty-Five", used on both Radio London and Radio 1 to announce an oldie single; certainly the rather clunky title sounds like the kind of wordplay Walters liked, rather than something thought up by Peel. The slot was eventually abandoned, but by then Peel was in the habit of adding occasional older records to his mostly current playlists and continued to do this for the rest of his radio career.

A list of Disinterred Thirty-Three and a Third tracks is given below. Some are from tracklists where no recording is currently available, but seem likely to have been chosen for the feature on account of their age and/or rarity. Peel didn't always take the thirty-three-and-a-third part of the title seriously and included a few singles and EP tracks among his choices.

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