The John Peel autobiography is, necessarily, a strange book. It was started by Peel, but he had only reached page 165 at the time he died. His wife Sheila, with help from the rest of the family finished it off, so it is half autobiography and half biography. It sounds like it should not work, but it does.

If Peel had continued, the book could have been reaching several volumes. By page 165 he had only got as far as his mid-twenties.

As it is, the format enforced on the book enables a bit more praise for Peel in the second part than he would have allowed himself. There are two reasons why Sheila was able to finish off the book the way she did – firstly they were obviously a close family and John wore his heart on his sleeve so she knew a lot more about what he had done than many wives would know about their husbands, and secondly because John did seem to keep absolutely everything. And I mean everything. He raised hoarding to an art form.

This means that there are so many excerpts from his diaries, letters he wrote or received and articles or sleevenotes he had written that a huge amount of Sheila’s part of the book is actually in John’s own words.

On almost every page there is a quotable passage, whether it is particularly funny, wise, poignant, touching or just plain daft. This one, towards the end of the book, says what many must have thought but never put into words:

For ten days, I watched with something approaching reverence those tending Sheila on ward A3. Their generosity and tenderness transcended anything I could have imagined. By now, the nature of nursing and care will have meant that they have forgotten us as they turn to other hurt and frightened patients and their families, but we will never, never forget a single one of them. They did, after all, combine to save Sheila’s life.

At the end of the book is an appendix in the form of two letters John Peel wrote to his literary agent outlining the synopsis for his life story, and running to eleven pages between them.

Looking through these letters we see that Sheila managed to get most of it into the book, although a few bits are unfortunately lost to posterity, including:

“Visit to address lifers’ group at Gartree (including 3 of Guildford 4) 4 days before Guildford 4 are released.”

and

“Explanation of preference for Kylie, Sheena and the rest over Springsteen, U2, Dire Straits etc.”

The weird thing is that I expected to be more interested in the stories of all the bands he met and helped and all the other showbiz trappings, but what I found fascinating was the description of his childhood – surely the inspiration for Viz magazine’s ‘Victorian Dad’ comic strip.