"AND WE'VE SENT A TAPE TO JOHN PEELY, SO IT'S FINGERS CROSSED THERE..."

At a guess, I'm reckoning that everywhere, and especially everywhere on the internet is going to be over-run with well-intended gushing tributes to John Peel today, so I won't. Thinking back to the time of his death, the one thing that annoyed me was seeing the smug face of Simon Bates paying tribute to his 'good friend John' on TV. Anyone who remembers anything about Radio 1 in the 1980s will recall quite how much Peel detested Simon Bates.

Here are my three favourite stories.

From the Telegraph:

"His disdain for Simon Bates was such that, on one occasion, Peel, his wife Sheila and Andy Kershaw were moved to take a 250-mile round-trip to High Wycombe simply to boo Bates's appearance as Abunazzar in Aladdin."

Peel himself:

"On one occasion Kid Jensen, Paul Burnett and myself - not a carefully honed fighting team, but nonetheless filled with drink - we went down and waited in the underground carpark at the BBC for the opportunity to beat up Simon Bates. Fortunately he didn't turn up, or we might have suffered an embarrassing reverse, as he's probably stronger than us."

My favourite of all though, was the time he was announcing a competition on-air to win a load of Godflesh goodies to coincide with their 'Mothra' single. Peel invited listeners to ring in and answer the question "Mothra is a fictional monster who manages to eat, communicate and reproduce using just the one orifice. Which daytime Radio 1 DJ does Mothra most resemble?"

God bless John Peel.