The Guardian 12/10 'No one can ever be the next John P

It is 6pm on Sunday but upstairs at the Lock Tavern in Camden, north London, nobody is interested in tea-time or the Antiques Roadshow. The pub is hosting a party and it's going off like peak-time Saturday night. In control is the free-wheeling club Sunday Best and their fashionably tousled, arty crowd are dancing on tables, swilling pints and necking sambuca shots, squeezing good-naturedly through the throng, or swaying to a good-time soundtrack of old-time hip hop.

Rob Da Bank, ponytailed DJ and Sunday Best impresario, has just dropped House of Pain's bouncing rap classic Jump Around - and is about to introduce a cabaret trio in trilbies called Mr Hat. He seems, on the face of it, an unlikely candidate to become the New John Peel.

The Blue Room chill-out show he co-hosts on Radio 1 is confined to the spectacularly unsociable time slot of 4-7am on Saturday morning. And he is best known for playing music that makes people dance. But since the sudden death of the veteran broadcaster, Da Bank has been hosting his show three times a week - and the New John Peel is what sections of the media are already calling him.

"It's been an absolute rollercoaster, but amazing as well," he says. "Just finding out so much more about music than I thought I ever would. And interacting with Peel fans who'd been listening to John for 37 years ... it's been very emotional."

Both Rob - real name Robert Gorham - and Radio 1 insist he's just sitting in until Christmas, when a decision will be made. It's a sensitive time for the station and everyone is keen to play down any suggestion that Peel can - or will - be replaced. "I think anyone would find it weird, full stop, to be trying to present the Peel show," Gorham says. "That's why no one can ever be the next John Peel and no one's trying."

But Gorham has tackled the Peel Show with a balance of careful reverence for its founder and enthusiasm for its music. While he can't match Peel's effortless sense of engagement, his lazy, nasal drawl seems to work. "I think it's probably one of the most difficult things we've ever asked anyone to do," says Ian Parkinson, Radio 1's head of specialist programming, "and Rob has done much better than anyone could have expected." So far, the listeners approve. "The feedback from the audience has been very positive. They said it's a really, really difficult job but thank you for what you've been doing."

Gorham had already been selected to look after Peel's famous Radio 1 show while the 65-year-old DJ took a holiday. He was at the station "vibing up" when news of Peel's death hit. Gorham had been a Peel fan since childhood, and had even shared Peel's office at the station. "I felt complete shock," he says. "Total disbelief and a cold feeling all over."

On the face of it, the laconic 32-year-old makes an unlikely new Peel. He is ringmaster for the Sunday Best circus - which grew out of Sunday night chill-out sessions in a Battersea tea-room to embrace compilation albums, a label that houses acclaimed artists such as Grand National and parties in London, Miami and Ibiza. It's all decorated with the pastel-pink, quirky cartoons of his wife, Josie, an illustrator who also owns a Sunday Best-style bar in Hoxton, east London.

Gorham and Josie - "creative director of all things Da Bank" - travel the summer music festivals in their VW camper van, Stella, which is parked out back of their home in south London. Built into one corner of their neat garden is a silver spaceship, put there by the previous occupant. You sense it might have been as much of an incentive to buy the place as anything else.

We sit upstairs in a room jammed with records, where Rob is sorting out tonight's show. "We've got some reggae, some indie, some really mad Japanese techno," he grins. Luckily, Peel had left boxes of records earmarked for airplay. Rob brought his own music along, and went record shopping with Peel's two young producers. "I tried to keep it as low-key as possible," he says, calling himself "a caretaker playing the right tunes in the right order".

Gorham grew up in the village of Warsash in Hampshire, where his dad was the local GP. He and his siblings all performed with their father in the village brass band (Rob played trombone). He was a goth/indie kid, listening to John Peel under the covers. "Full Robert Smith back-combed hair, walking around sullenly, kicking cans down the road." He wrote little stories, hated school, and built up an impressively varied record collection when not playing bass in a rock band.

He came to London to study French and history of art at Goldsmiths, but landed a work placement at now-defunct dance magazine Muzik - then refused to leave until they gave him a job. "I couldn't believe what an amazing world it was. You get free records. Pete Tong would walk into the office - very exciting for a 21-year-old," he says.

He became clubs editor, and something of a clubland celebrity. The magazine featured a picture of him, arms gleefully aloft, in the middle of a swarming dancefloor. The headline read: "He is. Are you?" He retains that sense of cheek. In one of his shows, he invited people to decide who is the more "fit": Chrissie Hynde, or Yeah Yeah Yeahs' frontwoman, Karen O. Male and female listeners instantly responded.

Rob became a DJ almost by default, after opening Sunday Best as a low-key, chill-out session at the Tea Rooms des Artistes in 1995. It cost just Ł1.99 to get in, but star DJs such as Andrew Weatherall and Norman Cook were happy to seize the chance to play whatever they wanted: hip-hop, disco, chill-out, old classics. Along with the Big Chill, Sunday Best redefined what constituted both a club and a DJ set. Now, freestyle DJ sets and lounges are common; then, it was revolutionary.

Earlier this year, Rob released an album under the Lazyboy alias he shares with rising producer Mr Dan (he produced Kylie's hit Slow), featuring guests such as Lee "Scratch" Perry and Roddy Frame. Their next single, Police Dogs Bonfire, has been picked up for a mobile phone ad campaign.

It's a mini empire - although in a rambling, boho sort of way. "There is no Da Bank masterplan, it happens by the day, by the week, by the month," he insists. But you don't end up with a Radio 1 show, a world-famous club, a record label and a recording career by accident. Rob's approach might be shambolic, but it's certainly effective.

At the Lock Tavern, one of his oldest friends tells me that Gorham has always been the high achiever in their social group. Gorham says vaguely it's about searching for happiness. "That's what all of this is all about for me. It's the old escape thing. It makes me happy doing music."

The club night is a reunion for Sunday Best's first festival - or "Bestival" - which brought 7,000 people to the Isle of Wight last September for a weekend of Basement Jaxx, Chas'n'Dave, Kate Bush impersonators and morris dancers. Rob Da Bank's freestyle DJ sets come packed with humour. Duellin' Banjos is one his favourite party tracks. DJing with half of comedy hip-hop duo and Sunday Best stalwarts the Cuban Brothers at this year's Big Chill festival, he got a huge crowd dancing to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, before attempting the world's longest Greek dance.