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@moth
It really hurts to learn this about his past. For all that most of it was public domain, I didn't know it. Although i feel the urge to make excuses, i think i agree with Clive that that's not right. Can we hang onto and hold separate the good things though?
His late-night show on radio 1 meant a lot to me, and his death and it's end is a loss i still feel and mourn. (Also, the cancellation of Mixing It on radio 3 little more than a year after i'd discovered it. My life has had a lot less music in it since.) One of my most treasured possessions is a tape of a PJ Harvey concert live from the Improv theatre that he hosted on radio 1 - it happened to be his 60th. The tape changes over half-way through the intro of PJ's stunning 'rid of me' (which Peel mis-announces as 'legs') and ends before the Echo & the Bunny Men set which followed. Filling between the sets, Peel gets the record player stuck in reverse, and plays a Fall track call 'folding money' that still hops into my head every time i use a cash machine. His incompetence was endearing because it was so easy to feel his broad deep love of music and life.
Sexually, was he late to the game? Was his behaviour in america the coincidence of late immaturity with status and a glut of opportunity? I remember him relating advice he'd once been given by his brother: "The thing you have to remember about sex, John, is girls like it too." I don't know what it meant to him, but to me it meant a lot.
I had a fairly isolated rural childhood, in a fairly feminist household, so between that and mainstream culture i learned a faith in the rightness of women and an understanding that sex was something men wanted from women, and to get it you'd either trade commitment (which i couldn't honestly do) or deceive and manipulate (not me either). The idea that women would want to explore too was a revelation to me (though i've not made *that *much of it). The point is, to me, that advice was the opposite of predatory.
There probably are cases where an under-aged participant in sexual contact is not a vicitim, but has the maturity, capacity, knowledge and power to have made their own decision. But identifying those cases is not a judgement that can be left to either of the participants at the time -- because of all the cases where that standard isn't met and the participants will judge wrongly. So we have a hard but arbitrary cut-off line and the law gives younger people have less liberty and more protection, while older victims are guarded by weaker rules.
Does the British teenager he got pregnant consider herself his victim, or someone who made her own (bad) choices? She doesn't seem to say, but given that she's coming forwards now, perhaps it's more the former. In any case, to allow special pleading even with hind-sight would erode the sharp division of the law.
Given my shallow experience i'm the last one who should be trying to unravel the complexities of power and desire that surround sex. I think there is still a lot of John Peel that i'll hold precious, but i feel a new loss too. Sorry for the rambling and all the 'but's .