Peel show
Ostensibly, 1983 should have been a time for jubilation. Walters returned to the fold: Chris Lycett moved to producing The Breakfast Show in January, and Trevor Dann produced Kat's Karavan for a mere three months before landing an attachment to television. As soon as he came back, Walters made his mark by discovering the Smiths, booking them for two session that were broadcast in June and September and remain classics in a highly competitive field.
The first of those two sessions became embroiled in a controversy over the lyrics to 'Reel Around The Fountain', which The Sun claimed detailed a case of paedophilia. Indeed, within the year another controversy would hit the BBC when Mike Read refused to play Frankie Goes To Hollywood's debut single, a heady slice of punk disco named 'Relax'. This led to a blanket ban by the BBC, although Peel continued to play it, going out after the watershed as he did. In some respects, this recalled the furore over 'God Save The Queen', but by now the format of the show was so well established and JP seen so much as a staple of late-night fare that few feathers were ruffled.
However, there were elements in the BBC who seemed to feel that Peel was untroubled by further marginalisation and were still trying to move him out of the FM slot, [6] and in October 1984 his Thursday show was taken away to be replaced by his old colleague Tommy Vance with a melodic rock show called Into The Music, listening to which JP sneeringly suggested was like watching paint dry. [7]
In six years, John's weekly airtime had been slashed from ten hours to six, yet 1983 had brought listeners in contact with not only the Smiths, but Billy Bragg, Microdisney and the Farm, so John's glumness about the music of the year at the end of the 1983 Festive Fifty was not entirely founded. There had apparently been an (unsuccessful) attempt by listeners to keep New Order's 'Blue Monday' from reaching the FF number 1 spot, which could mark the beginning of the vote-rigging of the chart that would bedevil it until the end. This became even more prominent during the 1984 Festive Fifty,when JP suspected block voting had allowed the Membranes' 'Spike Milligan's Tape Recorder' to make number 6 in that chart. Nevertheless, the year belonged to a new genre called cowpunk, the Pogues made an inebriated session debut (and swore so much that one track was never broadcast), and the Jesus And Mary Chain rose from nowhere to rule Peel's playlists.
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