Tubular Bells TX Top Gear 29/5/73

[ken garner]

Here's a nutty Q for you all. The myth is that Peel played Tubular 
Bells in its entirety. Mike Oldfield says so himself: "Someone said 
John Peel was going to play Tubular Bells. I switched on the radio to 
listen and he played the whole thing – both sides of it, an hour's 
music. I sat there completely stunned. After he played it people 
started to believe in it. It went on to sell millions and topped the 
charts for nearly two years. So really I owe him my life." But I can 
only find in the scripts one play from it, on 29/5/73 (4 days after 
release) and timing the rest of the records listed in the show plus 
allowing say 8 minutes for his total links between 23 items (I remember 
Peel telling me once that he set an absolute limit of 11 minutes for 
himself in a two hour show; normally aiming for 7/8 minutes, or an 
average of about 15 secs per link), leaves a max of 25 minutes in the 
show, time for side one only. The Tubular Bells item says it's only '15 
minutes', which is clearly intended to be diplomatic. Is the script 
correct? Do you know? Did anybody hear or even tape it?

KG