This guy is ga ga about radio (From Swindon Advertiser)

This guy is ga ga about radio

11:51am Thursday 16th February 2012 in Reviews

IN 2002 legendary DJ John Peel had a stack of records in his shed that he needed to shift.

And so he decided to give them away via a competition on his radio show.

The delighted winner was a student from Norwich called John Osborne. John loved the John Peel show and, as he worked his way through the odd collection of vinyl, he realised how much he loved radio too.

The result is this delightful one-man show which was a sell-out success on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year.

On stage John is an engaging presence. With a rickety old chair, a record player (remember them?) and some of the albums strewn about, he proceeds to chat about what music and radio have meant to him, recounting funny, bizarre and touching stories he has heard on all sorts of stations.

Occasionally these are punctuated with bursts from some of his prize collection. At first you may wince at the snap, crackle and pop as John lowers the stylus on to a track by Oizone, but will laugh when you realise that this is a punk tribute band to Boyzone.

Other obscure artists feature, such as Atom and his Package, whose music is as odd as his name, but because of chronic asthma, had to give it all up and is now a chemistry teacher in Pennsylvania.

The show is a mix of the funny, the nerdy, and the poignant. John was working in Austria when Radio 1 had a tribute night to Peel after he died. John’s dad, by no means a fan of the music Peel played, recorded the whole show on a number of cassette tapes and posted them to his son – who didn’t have a tape player to play them on.

If you’re not laughing and crying at that anecdote, then you are probably not human.

STEPHEN WEBB