Long Live The Ruts...

[Tom Roche]

>I always assumed your name was pronounced something like "Rosh", but then it
>occurred to me it might have been you.
>Was I right?
>
>Alan


Yeh, that's me. I started writing John in the early 80's from the 
southern USA saying nice things about his program on shortwave. Then 
one day on his taped World Service show he intro'd a record and 
nothing happened, there was some dead air, someone said we'll have to 
do that again and Peel said "starting from where?"

So he re-intro'd the record and the show continued - it was clearly 
some flub that should have been edited out. And the show still had 2 
more repeat airings so I thought what the heck he's answered two of 
my letters and this can't wait. So I will call Radio 1 right at 
12:01AM his time just as he would have finished the domestic show, 
and say overseas call and see if I can get through.

And I did, and he was gracious and said he'd look into the bad edit, 
and by the way how did I pronounce my name because he wanted to be 
sure he said it right on the air. So I was impressed with his concern 
about that.

Roche is not a common name in the US but in my (long deceased) 
grandparent's native home of Listowel Ireland there is Roche gas, 
Roche toy store, Roche meat market etc. All my life I'd pronounced it 
like roach, and was subjected to some amount of childhood name 
calling - Florida roaches are pretty unpleasant - but it wasn't 
terrible... then my wife-to-be said well it was French before it was 
Irish if you go back many centuries... and thus it became '"rohsh" .. 
and my kids have had an easier time I guess.

This biz about writing Peel during the SW years was covered in a 
piece I wrote for a local music magazine right after Peel's funeral. 
I posted it here first. I used to send people to the magazine's site 
(as I dont have a webpage and it won some writing award) but it was 
taken down. Would anyone with a site of their own like to host the 
article and accompanying pictures for me once again?


tom r
atlanta