John Peel's Shed

In 2002 John Osborne won a competition on John Peel's Radio 1 show. His prize was a box of 150 records from John Peel's own collection. John Peel's Shed is a show featuring the best tracks from those records. The series starts on Sunday 2^nd May at 9 pm on Future Radio and podcasts of the show will be available here after each show has aired.

 

The record collection includes 7 inch singles and full albums, including Screaming Lord Sutch, Royal Trux and Chilly Gonazles. The prize was won after John Peel invited listeners to send in reasons why they listened to his show, which he would send as part of the submission to that year’s Sony Awards. “My winning sentence was 'Music you want to hear played by a man who wants you to hear it.'” Osborne remembers. “Another box of records was won by someone suggesting 'John Peel has got thousands of records and is not afraid to use them.'”

                                                                          

 

In 2009 John Osborne published his first book, Radio Head, Up and Down the dial of British Radio. “I was quite rude about some people in my book' Osborne says. “Any radio presenter I felt wasn’t making much of an effort, or I didn't find particularly interesting to listen to. People like Jo Whiley and Edith Bowman. But when I decided to give radio a go myself I realised how difficult it is, I stumbled my way through it at first, you won't hear me pronounce my ‘ts’ until episode 3.”

 

Osborne first visited Future Radio as research for his book. “It was after spending time at the station and seeing people passionate about radio and doing their own shows that gave me the idea to do this. Ever since I won the records I’ve wanted to do something with them, make people aware of them. Listening to Peel's show was a huge part of my life for so many years, and I've been aware of how lucky I am to have such a collection. I hope people like this show as much as I've enjoyed putting it together.”

“I found it interesting to hear so many lesser known and forgotten bands in the collection, and also to find out what they are up to now. I found out about one band whose record I had  – called Girls at Our Best, their bassist is now a heating engineer in Leeds. I find that kind of thing fascinating. I'll be getting in touch with as many of these bands as possible over the next few weeks to tell them about the show, that their band will be on the radio again.”