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John Peel’s record collection ‘mainly novelty singles’

Music News: The names of the first 100 albums of the late DJ John Peel’s record collection have been published online, and mainly consist of embarrassing novelty songs.

“We all make poor choices when we first start buying music,” said a spokesman for The John Peel Centre, which aims to recreate the late broadcaster’s home studio and library. “Clearly he only played the good albums on the radio and listened to the rubbish in private.”

Peel, who died in 2004, had a collection of about 25,000 vinyl albums – which, statistically, means that most only had one or two good tunes on them.

“It’s not like the first record John ever bought was a Fall or an Undertones album. They didn’t exist then. Give the guy a break – don’t tell me your first record wasn’t some embarrassing one-hit wonder novelty tune.”

“Frankly, if you were buying music in 1986 then you’d also have a picture disc version of The Chicken Song by Spitting Image. Like many things from the eighties, it must have seemed a good idea at the time.”

Story+Image: Simon Swatman