Peel Book

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‘Bookworm’s’ column from the most recent edition of Private Eye:

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While Transworld waits for John Peel’s widow to finish the DJ’s 
memoirs, other less contractually-bound publishers are rushing out the 
inevitable cash-ins.

First up, just pipping Michael O’Mara with Michael Heatley’s _John 
Peel: A Life In Music_, are Mick Wall and Orion with _John Peel_: a 
tribute to the hugely popular DJ and broadcaster. For their £15, 
buyers get something that superficially resembles a proper hardback 
biography, but which on closer inspection is very poor value. Wall’s 
main qualification for being Peel’s biographer is that he has knocked 
out similar cash-ins and that Peel once showed him how to use a BBC 
coffee machine. The book is about as deep and meaningful as this 
encounter.

The slenderness of the text, little of which could not have been 
gleaned from newspapers or the internet, is bolstered by print only 
marginally smaller than that used in books for the partially-sighted. 
Meanwhile, the last quarter of the book is bulked out by complete 
listings of Peel’s Festive 50 charts from 1976 to last year. Given 
that Wall must have been pitching the idea while Peel was still warm 
to get anything out in time for Christmas, it is fanciful to imagine 
him faithfully transcribing the charts himself from off-air 
recordings. More likely he lifted them wholesale from 
www.rocklist.net/festive50.htm, which comes at the top of any Google 
search for “Festive 50”.

Wall and Orion know it’s hard to claim copyright in a simple list, and 
that the internet seems to be a free-for-all; but that doesn’t make 
them profiting from the hard work of an unpaid and uncredited fan any 
less shabby.