Margrave of the Marshes book review in the Guardian

[Tom Roche]

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,1593001,00.html?gusrc=rss

Unfinished sympathy

John Peel's wife Sheila Ravenscroft completed 
Margrave of the Marshes after he died - and has 
produced an immensely compelling portrait, says 
Simon Garfield

Sunday October 16, 2005
The Observer




Margrave of the Marshes
by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft
Bantam Press £18.99, pp420

Almost a year ago, John Peel's memorial service 
seized up a town. The bewildered police in Bury 
St Edmunds had expected hundreds of people, not 
thousands, and the cathedral was full more than 
an hour before his family arrived with the 
coffin. Those of us left outside in the drizzle 
who believed they had left home in plenty of time 
were forced to reflect that perhaps John had not 
been talking to us alone after all.

Article continues


  As the funeral progressed, the Radio 1 website 
filled with the sort of emotion not usually 
evident when an important British broadcaster 
passes away. People who had never met him wrote 
of how much he meant to them, and how he got them 
through a difficult period in their lives. Many 
messages had an intensity that would have driven 
Peel to helpless tears. It was difficult to 
explain precisely what had caused this outpouring 
- something that continues this month with many 
anniversary tributes. But it was clear that it 
wasn't just about playing challenging records 
late at night or revealing complicated domestic 
situations on Saturday mornings. It may just be 
that he achieved effortlessly from the start what 
most presenters never achieve in their entire 
careers: a personal relationship with the 
listener that made us believe we were hearing 
from a friend.

His autobiography was well under way by the time 
he died of a heart attack in Peru at the age of 
65, but his life and his account of it was so 
full of diversions that he had not yet reached 
the point where he had spun a record on air. In 
fact, he had only just lost his virginity. Peel 
would thus have referred to this book as a game 
of two halves: his own story of his school days 
and national service followed by his wife 
Sheila's report of his subsequent career and 
family life. Each section has its own pleasures 
and limitations, but jointly they may have 
created a publishing first: the patient and 
analyst in one immensely compelling volume.

Longstanding readers of this newspaper's review 
pages will remember Peel as an original and 
humorous writer, but may be surprised at how well 
he had grasped this longer form. The narrative is 
chronological, but it is informed by more recent 
asides; his teenage traumas, for example, are 
followed by tales of the middle-aged female fan 
who was convinced the famous Peel lived in a 
commune in Baker Street with Lou Reed and Stevie 
Wonder (Peel played along with this, informing 
her how he dreaded the weeks when it was Stevie's 
turn to cook). In other words, we do get glimpses 
of his wonderful future career to redeem the 
tales of masturbation, bullying and all-round 
teenage desolation.

There was not much warmth in his Cheshire 
childhood home, certainly not from his parents. 
Peel was born a few days before the outbreak of 
the Second World War, and he didn't see his 
father until it was over. He remained a distant 
figure on his return, and his son recalls his 
fondness for regular bowel movements and his 
dislike of hugging. His mother is described 
vividly in terms of her fondness for the solitary 
consumption of romantic fiction and wearing 
embarrassing outfits whenever in the presence of 
his schoolfriends. His parents divorced when John 
was in his teens, and much later his mother 
hooked up with the actor Sebastian Shaw, who 
played Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi.

His mother regularly administered domestic 
beatings when John was perceived to have erred, 
something that stood him in good stead when he 
became a boarder at Shrewsbury. Peel, still known 
then as John Ravenscroft, was not the academic 
type, and his school reports display nothing but 
despair. Yet he was a handsome youth and his 
study monitors found him irresistible. His 
account of servicing these boys and being 
buggered by one of them in a cemetery toilet has 
already made headlines, although he writes about 
it with more of a shrug than a howl, as if he was 
reading a favourite dismal lyric by the Smiths. 
Indeed, with a couple of exceptions, most of his 
writing has a soft, forgiving tone: he even finds 
an agreeable side to Tony Blackburn and Chris 
Moyles; the worst he can say about pop stars is 
that Sting is 'tiresome'.

After boarding school, national service held few 
horrors. Peel's half of the book ends in the 
United States, but it is clear his heart isn't in 
his insurance job. His time is split fairly 
evenly between meeting John Kennedy and Nixon on 
the campaign trail, seeing a stripper called 
Chris Colt, The Girl with the 45s, and pursuing 
his burgeoning taste for obscure rock'n'roll and 
blues.

His flash-forwards contain anecdotes he has told 
so many times that he is almost apologetic about 
recounting them again, although they all bear 
publication. We get the first time he heard 
Elvis, on Two-Way Family Favourites, the 
fanaticism for Liverpool FC that led to the 
middle-naming of his children Anfield, Anfield, 
Shankly and Dalglish, and the Bay City Rollers 
gig at which Tony Blackburn was escorted across a 
lake by a Womble ('Look on this and marvel,' Peel 
murmured to Johnnie Walker at the time).

It is left to his wife and children to take the 
story on, and explain the reason for the crowds 
at the funeral. It is the closest thing to a 
200-page love letter that we may read this year, 
but its subject would have been appalled if his 
faultlines weren't also on display. His huge 
influence on the musical tastes of two 
generations is handled well, but it's the 
disclosure of his great sensitivity and private 
doubts that provides the most rewarding insight. 
Domestic life in Suffolk was chronicled by Peel 
on Home Truths on Radio 4 (often in a little too 
much detail for his children), but there were 
only hints that he considered himself an 
inadequate father. Sheila writes of his distress 
at being absent so much when his children were 
young, to the point that he confused their names; 
he regarded even 10 minutes' quality time with 
them each day as an impossible goal. And then 
there were his unpredictable and occasionally 
raging moods that would send his children 
scurrying for shelter.

The second half draws heavily on Peel's diary 
entries and published writing, and there are some 
wonderful and woeful surprises, not least his 
soft spot for Status Quo and the details of his 
disastrous first marriage to an underage girl in 
America. It was intriguing to discover how often 
Sheila's own reminiscences are framed with a 
similar phraseology to her husband's (she writes 
of the 'dimly lit corners of the internet' where 
there are sites dedicated to his on-air gaffes). 
The title of the book is the title Peel jokingly 
conferred on himself in his grander moments at 
home; a possible alternative was If He Ever Hits 
Puberty, an expression his Radio 1 producer John 
Walters used to employ with regularity ('If John 
ever hits puberty, we'll both be in trouble ... 
').

The book ends, bravely I think, with lists of 
events Peel sent to his literary agent for 
possible inclusion in an autobiography before a 
deal was signed: 'Terror at attending Desert 
Island Discs anniversary do in ill-fitting suit 
... an exhibition of awful Japanese paintings 
with Samantha Fox and Shirley Williams for Gloria 
Hunniford on TV ... anecdotes (unflattering) 
about visits to Peel Acres by Sue Cook (who broke 
our electric blanket) and Bob Geldof.' All of 
which would have made this a longer, increasingly 
eccentric but probably no more delightful book.