London: A woman has claimed she became pregnant by DJ John Peel during a three-month affair when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.
According to the Daily Mail report, the BBC star presenter met Jane Nevin backstage at a Black Sabbath concert in the summer of 1969.
Mrs Nevin says she was ‘in awe’ of the Radio 1 DJ, then 30, and that they would go to his London BBC studio or backstage at concerts to make love.
Peel had unprotected sex with the teenager shortly after boasting on-air that he had been suffering from a venereal disease. They split up when her mother found out about the relationship. But she discovered she was pregnant shortly after, aged 16, and had a ‘traumatic’ abortion at a clinic in Ealing.
‘I was devastated when I found out I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even think about telling John. I just wanted it to be over.’
When Mrs Nevin wrote to Peel out of the blue 30 years later mentioning their ‘brief affair’, he replied expressing his relief that she was not writing to confess she had his secret child.
On a postcard sealed in an envelope, Peel, who died in 2004, wrote: ‘Well, you’ve scared the daylights out of me. For years I’ve been expecting a letter starting, “In the 70s we had a brief affair – and your now son/daughter, aged 27, wants to meet you”.’
Mrs Nevin, 59, who lives in Capel, Surrey, decided to break her silence after allegations emerged that fellow BBC DJs abused dozens of teenage girls during this period.
The latest revelation will raise questions over the conduct of other celebrities within the corporation during the 1960s and 1970s.
She said: ‘He [Peel] must have known I was still at school. But he didn’t ask and I didn’t tell him.
‘At the time I was just so happy to be on his arm. I was young and he was famous. All I cared about was that I could make all my school friends jealous.
‘I was insecure and impressionable. I suppose I used him for his fame and he used me for sex.’
It echoes Peel’s own admission that he received sexual favours from young fans, once quipping: ‘Well, of course, I didn’t ask for ID.’
The DJ ran a Schoolgirl Of The Year competition on his long-running late-night Radio 1 Show and once complained that American virgins ‘would do anything but s*** you’. Mrs Nevin met Peel when she was invited backstage at a Black Sabbath concert in central London. She was hoping to meet the band, including Ozzy Osbourne, but instead caught the eye of Peel.
She said: ‘He came over and started talking to me. I was totally in awe of John. I adored his long hair and beard and he talked so intensely about music.
‘After that night, we would meet up about once a week. If we had sex, we never went to his place.
‘It would always be in his studio or backstage at the Roundhouse in Camden.
‘I loved the status of knocking around with him. He would invite me to gigs and I would follow him around like a lapdog. I don’t know if sex was expected but I went along with it willingly. Looking back, it was terribly wrong and I was perhaps manipulated. But it was a different era.’
She admits it was a difficult period in her life. ‘I was badly bullied at school for being posh. I went to private school in South London until I was 11, but when my father died, my mother couldn’t afford to keep me there so I went to the local comprehensive in Wandsworth.
‘I did horse riding and dance classes at Italia Conti. I didn’t fit in. As a result, I was desperate to be loved.’
At the time, Peel was separated from Shirley Anne Milburn, a fan he had married in 1965 in America when she was only 15. He later claimed she had lied about her age.
When Mrs Nevin’s mother, an antiques restorer, found out her daughter was dating the DJ, she was horrified.
‘One night he called the house and my mother gave him hell,’ said Mrs Nevin. ‘She knew he had spoken about having VD because it had been in the papers. That put an end to us seeing each other.’
Later, a test confirmed she was pregnant. ‘My mother was very upset. She was worried I had ruined my life. My auntie had to lend her the money and I went to a clinic in Ealing. It was probably the worst day of my life.’
Mrs Nevin went on to become a bunny girl croupier at the Playboy club in Park Lane in the 1970s. She later ran a pub with her husband, from whom she is separated, and had a son, now 24.
Peel divorced his teenage Texan bride Shirley in 1973 and married Sheila Gilhooly a year later. They had four children and lived in Great Finborough, Suffolk.
It was from this address that he wrote the letter to Mrs Nevin in the late 1990s, after she asked him to appear at the opening of her new bar in Surrey.
He rebuffed her invite, ending the postcard: ‘I live near Ipswich so Croydon is pretty inaccessible. I’ll wait to hear from you again, John.’
Last night a BBC spokesman said: ‘We are asking that any criminal allegations should be passed either to the BBC investigations unit or directly to the police.’
An insider added: ‘This is another terrible allegation and hopefully she will take this to the police so they can investigate.’