john peel-1.jpg
This was, lest we forget, a young man from Liverpool who had been cloistered in an all-male English public school, done his National Service, and then been sent by his father to a USA in the throes of Beatlemania. This was not a cigar-chomping predatory rapist.

No man has had an influence on my life more than John Peel.

This doesn't make him a god. As desperately sad as I would be if it became clear he was guilty of something hideous I'd accept it.

However, his marriage seems to be the only 'evidence' to 'wrongdoing'. As Colin B Morton writes today, the only noise on this has come from Julie Burchill - who has spent decades writing anti-Peel articles - she has always 'loathed' him, and has never missed an opportunity to infer something that no-one else has.

UPDATE OCT 12
Someone else has now. Not good, but consensual rather than predatory. Don't want to give him a pass just because of who he was, but this isn't comparable to Savile at all.

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