But I’m uneasy at the BBC’s continued beatification of the broadcaster, who this week was also the subject of an adoring Radio 1 documentary called How John Peel Changed My Life, in which the likes of Annie Nightingale, Rob Da Bank, Huw Stephens and Michael Palin paid teary tribute.
It’s worth remembering that this was a man who married a 15-year-old in the US (which, at the time, was legal in Texas) when he was in his mid-twenties , and who was later discovered to have had at least one other relationship with an underage girl in the UK [Another pregnancy?. And let’s not forget his Schoolgirl of the Year competition on his Radio 1 show in the early Seventies.
Does Peel’s lofty cultural standing mean that, even posthumously, he’s protected from the opprobrium meted out to fellow broadcasting “personalities”? Is his legacy so sacred that his questionable behaviour around young girls should be ignored?
This certainly seems to be the case with countless rock stars whose dubious dalliances in the Seventies are routinely glossed over – or worse still, excused as an acceptable part of the rock’n’roll package.
Still, in the case of Peel, you’d think the BBC would have learned its lesson by now.
Source linkage.
My addition in bold.
Why is Peel lauded, yet others are pilloried? In no way am I defending anyone involved in that sort of thing, such as Bill Wyman or Jimmy Page, but it does seem odd that there are some who are almost excused their behaviour.