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| - Bob Harris is a writer for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
- Bob Harris was the small town hero who was the patient in the episode The Confession. He was portrayed by actor Jamie Bamber.
- Mr. Harris' other writing credits include CSI, and he has played the onscreen part of Miles Mokri on Torchwood: Web of Lies.
- His friendship with Peel led to Harris being introduced to Radio 1 producers: a pilot show resulted in his first shows for Radio One in 1970, as holiday cover for Peel, and in the early stage of his career Peel was, as he acknowledged, an important influence: "John was my mentor. He guided me through the early days of my career and shepherded me into Radio 1....He believed in me, he was prepared to step forward and help me." Later Peel and Harris became estranged, both musically and personally, but their relationship became friendlier during Peel's final years.
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| abstract
| - Bob Harris is a writer for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
- Bob Harris was the small town hero who was the patient in the episode The Confession. He was portrayed by actor Jamie Bamber.
- His friendship with Peel led to Harris being introduced to Radio 1 producers: a pilot show resulted in his first shows for Radio One in 1970, as holiday cover for Peel, and in the early stage of his career Peel was, as he acknowledged, an important influence: "John was my mentor. He guided me through the early days of my career and shepherded me into Radio 1....He believed in me, he was prepared to step forward and help me." Later Peel and Harris became estranged, both musically and personally, but their relationship became friendlier during Peel's final years. Harris grew up in Northampton and, like Peel, was inspired by Radio Luxembourg to pursue a DJ career, but after leaving school followed his father's advice and trained as a police cadet (he was also a talented rugby player) before moving to London in 1966. His enthusiasm was fired by Peel's Perfumed Garden programme on Radio London, which he still maintains was the most important influence on his own DJing style, describing it as having "a sense of community" that touched him "in a massive way": "I met up with John Peel at the end of 1967 and I recorded an interview with him. At the end of our meeting and conversation together, he already by this time had started calling me 'young Bob', and he said, 'Before you go, young Bob, I want to give you an album which I think you'll like,' and he gave me a copy of Forever Changes by Love." He interviewed Peel for the student magazine Unit in early 1968 and later that year was co-founder, with Tony Elliott, of the listings magazine Time Out. He soon left, claiming that he lacked Elliott's dynamism and ambition, and contributed articles and record reviews to underground papers such as Oz and Friends. It was as a journalist, researching a feature on Radio One for Friends, that he was able (with Peel's help) to meet producer Jeff Griffin, for whom he auditioned before being given the chance to do four shows while Peel was on holiday in August 1970. His stand-in work was successful enough for him to obtain a regular Monday evening programme of his own in the Sounds of the Seventies series on Radio One, after its host, DJ David Symonds, resigned from the BBC. Supported by producers and engineers who had also worked with Peel (such as Jeff Griffin and John Muir), Harris was the most successful of the new "progressive" DJs. His initial playlists were not very different from Peel's but soon his shows developed an identity of their own, with more emphasis on singer-songwriters, a major trend of the early 1970s with which "Whispering Bob" became closely associated. In a 1972 column for the magazine Zigzag, he wrote: For the first time since summer, I'm in the country - in Suffolk, to be exact. Using the very typing machine which brings you John Peel's column in Disc each week.... ...I didn't thank you last time because I didn't know, but thank you for the poll result. John was rightly number one. Without him, my radio programme, this magazine, and many more like it, would most likely not be possible. To be second to him in you thoughts has made me very happy. He has done a very great deal for all of us. (Zigzag 24, 1972, page not numbered) Peel and Harris were good friends at this time, both of them well-established DJs with a loyal audience. This situation lasted until 1975, when Harris lost his radio programme in the BBC cost-cutting exercise which led to the Sounds of the Seventies shows being scrapped. By then, however, Harris had become known to the television audience as the presenter of BBC2's The Old Grey Whistle Test, a programme which concentrated on artists who had made LPs, in contrast to the BBC's other pop TV show, the chart-based Top Of The Pops. Like Peel, he sometimes seemed shy and uncomfortable in front of a TV camera but did not share his older colleague's unwillingness to appear on television. As Peel later recounted, for example in Margrave of the Marshes (pp.34-35), he was sometimes mistaken for Bob Harris by members of the public who had seen his younger colleague on TV.
- Mr. Harris' other writing credits include CSI, and he has played the onscreen part of Miles Mokri on Torchwood: Web of Lies.
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