About 10 years ago John Osborne won a competition from legendary broadcaster John Peel, to come up with an apt slogan that summed up his radio programme (“Records you want to hear, played by a man who wants you to hear them”). The prize was a box of records from the great man’s shed, which took John Osborne eight years to listen to, and helped ignite a fascination with the sort of music Peel played (pretty much any kind of music, then) and for radio in general. Osborne went on to write a book Radio Head, about his adventures in radio listening in the UK, and his show, John Peel’s Shed, which debuted at Edinburgh Festival, is a homage to radio, music, and one of the long-lamented greats of British broadcasting. Explorer spoke to John Osborne prior to the show coming to the Junction this month.

The show’s partly based on your book Radio Head. How did the stage version come about?
“It’s not something I’d really thought about, but when I was writing Radio Head part of the research involved going to a community radio station, Future Radio in Norwich, where I told them about this box of records I’d won from John Peel. I’d always thought about doing a radio programme where I played the best tracks from that collection, and they helped me to do that. So it evolved into a radio show, and then podcasts, and a promoter heard them and suggested it would make a really good stage show for Edinburgh.”

So what happened with the original competition?
“It was in 2002, I was at my desk when I was a student in Norwich, listening to John Peel most nights. He suggested that people could write in with a couple of sentences to explain why they enjoyed listening to his show – it was something to do with entering the show for the Sony Awards. He said the best entry would be sent a box of records from his shed. A couple of days later I got a call from his producer saying I’d won, and a friend of John Peel’s drove in a van with a box of about 150 records and we sat in my living room and looked at them. I always wanted to do something special with them, especially after he died. I wanted to do something to commemorate what was a special box of records.”

And what was actually in the box? Was it as diverse as the stuff he played on air?
“There was everything in there. There were some things that I recognised like Screaming Lord Sutch and Shyheim from the Wu Tang Clan, and then there was indie and electro, stuff from the 60s – so yes, just exactly what you would hope. Just touching them and looking through the artwork – I’d never seen that amount of records in one place before.”

Why do you think John Peel was such a great broadcaster?
“Because he didn’t realise he was, I think. He was humble and shy, but put a lot of work into it. He spent his whole life obsessed with music and making sure the next radio show he was presenting was as good as it could possibly be. I think the best radio presenters dedicate their lives to it. On Radio 1 now there’s a lot of cool young presenters; you don’t really imagine they’re spending their evenings listening to records sent in from across the world. John Peel cared about the music and the people involved in the music.”

So what do you do on stage, and who do you think the show appeals to?
“I talk about John Peel and I talk about radio, and I talk about some of the bands and artists in the collection. I also play a few songs using a record player that’s on stage with me – in the same way that radio shows work really, just on stage. At first it was just John Peel fans who’d come to watch it, but then when I was doing Edinburgh Festival last year there were a couple of 16 year olds who’d never heard of John Peel but cried at the end because they didn’t know he died. So you don’t have to have heard of John Peel, but I think my ideal audience member is someone who used to sit at home and listen to John Peel under the bedclothes.”

John Peel’s Shed, Friday 24 February, 20:00 (doors 19:00). Cost: £8/£6. Junction J3, Clifton Way, T: 01223 511511 www.junction.co.uk