Within a week of his death, Manchester Evening News columnist Andrew Grimes is poking fun at John Peel’s mourners. He claims they’ve been taken in by a ‘mickey-taker of near genius’ and a fraud. Grimes isn’t even a comedian, but an aged reactionary playing up to the older readership. His by-line photo appears to show him in a bad wig (bald and proud myself, I suspect Grimes out of wig scares even himself).

Sadly, the paper isn’t brave enough to put his words online so I’ll have to summarise. Feigning admiration for Peel the ‘subversive satirist’, Grimes claims to expose Peel the fraud. He claims Peel ‘recommended yowlings and boom-boomings’ as a joke on ‘gullible record collectors’ looking for ‘intellectual endorsement of their primitive tastes’. Peel only really enjoyed the ‘pure beatific sounds of the blues’, claims Grimes, and would have ‘laughed at the pompously-phrased reactions to his untimely death’.

You can send a simple message to the Manchester Evening News by clicking here: postbag@men-news.co.uk.

UPDATE: Poking fun at John Peel mourners 2

Farewell John Peel……Vengeful Tabloids……Before there was blogging

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