niagra

everyone has their own heroes. and they should. in the sentiment of self-development; and immediately after, the development of the human species we should all have an aspiration to be better. personal heroes are a template; not to be worshiped like some earth-bound deity, but an example of a pattern to knit your life and your theology and your ethics to.

my esteemed friend the troubadour has chosen Doctor Who, and to be honest i can't think of a better choice; certainly for him. he would acceptably maintain that Doctor Who chose him. it makes sense, you can't choose who suddenly makes a profound impact on your life, especially not when it's a fictional character penned by the hands of a skillful writer. there's no development there, just BAM! and suddenly it's a new feature of your life. i guess it's the same with those chaps that end up with sports-people as their aspirational being - one spectacular performance and the immediate accolade is impossible to ignore.

i can't understand the sports thing entirely, though. lest not footballers who generally appear to be amazing at kicking a round thing between two sticks, but often brain-dead and rapists. they're good looking, oh yes, but to aspire to be good-looking when you're not good-looking is a pretty pointless and wasteful use of energy.

i have two heroes outside my dad and a few of my close friends, who create feelings more akin to an ultimate respect than the idea of an abstract heroic entity. in this conversation i'm calling a hero a distant figure, admired from afar. and there's a huge list of very adequate people to choose from in the worlds of science, religion, human advancements, literature... fiction and real. worthy contenders feature martin luther king, einstein, beethoven, superman, michael gambon, the suffrogettes, neil armstrong, king arthur. none without their faults, but a decent selection of life aims and objectives could be filtered from such a list.

i have two. and they may lack the grandeur of a world leader like j.f.k, or the historic significance of someone like mahatma ghandi, but i suppose that echoes true with the reality of myself. my intention was just to write about one, but it looks like i've waffled out a bunch of unnecessary exposition, how very like me. if by some chance i may lose any of the regular readers that my deluded mind convinces me exist, may i take this moment to thank you for letting me dribble my nonsense into your consciousness. i won’t be in any way offended if you leave now, with only a peripheral sight as to how long this entry is turning out to be.

my heroes.

the first is ewan mcgregor. i shouldn't have to formally write many reasons why, it’s far too obvious - the man's successful, talented, has a respectable list of brilliant films and theatrical productions to be proud of. then of course there's the immense human achievement of riding around the world on a motorbike. for charity. and to top it all off, the man is beautiful. i mean, seriously. it takes a lot for a definitively hetero chap like myself to entertain the idea, but... i would. for mcgregor.

but he’s not quite at the top of my list. yes, he’s a man of integrity and talent, and has french-kissed scarlett johansson... but i have a favourite. someone who sums up all the elements, attributes, achievements and life stories that i can only ever dream of catching a glimpse of. that man is john ravenscroft, better known as radio one d.j. john peel. if you ask me, he’s one of a rare few true jewels in the british crown (not that i’m in any way patriotic) joining a list that should include shakespeare, richard noble, monty python, robin hood and steven fry. a quietly unassuming character that could literally be held responsible for a change in the zeitgeist of british popular culture, although arguably unsung comparatively to the impact he had. one of the many reasons for my unending respect.

unlike the troubadour and the doctor, i don’t have a definitive and vivid recollection of my first conscious engagement with peel. sadly too, it is far too late in my life to have built my youth around him in the same way that the doctor has influenced troub’. my initial experience was most likely not even john peel himself but a track he played at around midnight as i drove home from my university years job at the ugc cinema in northampton. terribly, i don’t even remember what track it was that caught my attention as i searched for radio enjoyment in the dull greys of that horrible midland town, i suspect and hope that it was some sort of odd bluegrass number or a poorly produced punk track made in someone’s lounge. both are equally likely from john’s eclectic, eccentric playlist. whatever, it caught me off guard and aroused enough interest to keep me listening to an otherwise unbearable radio station. and it suited the atmosphere of the stillness of the night, the flickering street lamps and the pile of scrap metal i was driving around at the time.

as i say, i can’t remember particular details. i do remember being intrigued by the existence of such an oddity amongst the other d.j’s i’d heard that mostly put me off listening to radio at all. i do remember hearing captain beefheart for the first time on one of those drives home. my appalling memory only allows me a blurry idea of a weirdly varied selection of music and the drawling, strangely hypnotic delivery of an unending list of life stories that while not always life-changing, were always true, honest and erudite. i say not always life-changing, but subsequent interest has informed me that he was arguably instrumental in the careers of some of the most important bands in british popular culture: the sex pistols, the undertones, pulp, t-rex... actually i’m not going to list them, suffice to say that you have all heard of them and they could each be held partly responsible for much of the music you hear today, for the clothes you see on the street and for the attitudes of yourself and the sub-cultures around you... the rolling stones. ahem.

in short, in my opinion, if you have listened to any music and it has had any effect on you in the last 30 years then you have most probably been affected in some indirect way by peel. my love of the man doesn’t end there. anyone could play such an eccentric playlist, if they had the gall (sadly not very evident in todays media pandering to the mediocre tastes of the license paying majority), but there was a dedication that went with it that’s even harder to find. oh shit, i can see this going on for a long time... i’ve lost the brevity of my intentional blog entry. actually that disappeared after i wrote that thing about king arthur. it’s hard to stop once you’ve opened such a sluice of sickly gushing. for some reason it’s strangely satisfying to write, if not read over.

i just liked the guy. there was an honesty, an integrity to him. he quietly changed the course of popular culture without any desperate need for acceptance or praise. he loved his family. he was funny, intelligent, witty, eccentric and interesting. did you know he met J.F.K? no, i bet you didn’t. he worked hard at what he believed in, never let himself be compromised by external pressures, hated tony blackburn. it is basically a list of features that i had tried to have before finding peel, but a list that became suddenly credible and obtainable post-JP.

the best decision the bbc could make would be to resurrect all the recordings they have of him and play them in the same old slot, in chronological order, as they were first broadcast. i would listen intently, lapping up every track and word and mistake like a teenaged girl at a new kids on the block concert.

god i hate fanboys.