We were right in the middle of the pressured last hour of writing the TWTTIN script at just after 2pm. I was struggling to write a sufficiently amusing ending, when I got a text on my phone. "Oh which besotted woman is bothering me now?" I joked to the assembled cast, who didn't laugh but looked at me wearily in the way that anyone who has had to spend time shut in a room for hours on end will recognise.
But I opened the text to read "John Peel dies". My ebullient and excited mood suddenly shifted. I let out an expletive and went a bit quiet as I stared at the phone trying to make sense of it. It was a shocking way to get some horrible and totally unexpected news and I was trapped between disbelief and an instinctive welling up of tears. I couldn't tell the others what I'd just learned for a few seconds.
There was still hope that this was a mistake. A couple of years back I'd been with a friend who'd got a text saying that Rowan Atkinson had drowned on the set of his latest film. I had believed this to be the truth for about half an hour and kept checking the news on my phone. But that had turned out to be a stupid lie. I hoped that was the case too. Dan checked the internet and there was nothing about it on the BBC site, which was hopeful, but Danny checked a few seconds later and the news was confirmed.
I found myself experiencing a very palpable grief.
It's not like I can claim John Peel was a great mate of mine. Our paths had crossed on a couple of occasions and I'd been really chuffed when he had revealed himself as a fan of Fist of Fun in the Radio Times. Once when he had been Djing in Glastonbury me and Stew had got a note to him to ask him to mention the gig we were doing in the comedy tent and he'd been kind enough to do so. We had both also had the pleasure of working along side him when he was filling in on the Mark Radcliffe show and we were on as guests. It was strange chatting away with such an icon and I was terrified of making an idiot of myself in front of him, but probably managed to do so nonetheless. We passed an entertaining couple of hours with him and I was impressed, though not surprised by how relaxed and natural he was to be with. There aren't many people in the media who command your total respect. John Peel is one of the rare individuals who did.
But it's not because I've met him that I was affected by his death; it's because like so many other people who would also be hit by this news today I have listened to him on the radio, seen him on the TV, read him in the papers and felt like he was a friend, and like he was someone whose opinions were worth listening to.
We mourn him like a friend because he was a kind of friend. And that's not a bad epitaph to have.
