Mon 5 Mar
words: MAB JONES
It is a decade since student John Osborne won a competition on Radio 1 which challenged listeners to write a slogan for the John Peel Show. His winning phrase – “Records you want to hear, played by a man who wants you to hear them” – resulted in him receiving a box of records; a box that then took eight whole years to listen to. This show features a selection of these, some of them very rare, interspersed with amusing stories and anecdotes.
Partly inspired by his book, Radio Head: Up And Down The Dial Of British Radio (which was Radio 4’s Book of the Week), in which he listened to a different radio station every day, all day, for a month, this is a show charting Osborne’s journey from data entry clerk to radio presenter, on to acclaimed writer and performance poet. The show itself has received numerous four and five star reviews, and comes direct from a complete sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival. Described as a cross “between Tom Wrigglesworth and Daniel Kitson” (The Independent), Osborne’s ode to radio and records (with a script edited by Submarine writer Joe Dunthorne) is a must-see, and not just for Peel fans.