A massive cry-baby remembers John Peel

On July 28th 2004, I set in front of my green ghetto blaster-style radio weeping like a baby. Orbital were playing their last ever performance together. That gig, on a John Peel Maida Vale session, broke me.

I am a massive wuss.

Of course, Orbital later reformed, piddling all over my ridiculously inflated sense of loss, but that's not the point. It was a beautiful wireless moment when radio did everything that radio is meant to do when it's not Scott Mills or the bloody Archers. Seriously, if Mills ever gets a part in the Archers, I'm moving to a hideaway a mile under the ocean where my FM signal will be fuzzy at best.

Later that year, my sense of loss was compounded when John Peel ascended unto the great record shop in the sky. The bearded git made me cry twice in one year, which isn't bad for someone I had never met.

And so it seems appropriate, six years after Peel's death, to post a bit of that session on my blog. Both band and presenter remain a massive inspiration. I can only hope John Peel will piddle over my ridiculously inflated sense of loss by making a Jesus-style comeback halfway through the Olympic games.