John’s writing career began in 1971 with film reviews for the BFI’s Monthly Film Bulletin and a script for a BBC2 Film Night special on pop films, but he also wrote A Guide To British R&B for a publisher who went bust three weeks before delivery of the manuscript John had spent six months writing.

In 1972, having convinced editor Nick Logan that what New Musical Express's gig guide needed was a section on music films, John soon branched out into reviewing the dross discarded at the back of the album review cupboard. He was also encouraged by Clapham neighbour Charlie Gillett to become involved with Let It Rock before the ahead-of-its-time music monthly’s launch in October 1972. His first contribution was a far from comprehensive Eric Clapton discography, but a year later he was editor. By then, on Gillett’s recommendation, he was also writing scripts for Radio 1’s milestone documentary series, The Story Of Pop. While continuing to script documentary series for the network, he also wrote a novelisation of Slade In Flame, a biography of Eric Clapton, and a history of Rod Stewart and the Faces, all for Panther.

He had accompanied the Faces on their December 1972 UK tour to write a roadie’s diary, and roadied again for the band a year later as a replacement for a crew member hospitalised after a fight on the opening date of the tour. His association with the band led to a songwriting partnership with Ian McLagan, which in turn led to publishing deals with Island and Virgin Music. Ringo Starr recorded ‘Tonight’ (co-written for the reformed Small Faces with McLagan), while Runner’s ‘Run For Your Life’ (co-written with the group’s singer and guitarist Steve Gould) was Radio 1 breakfast show host DLT’s record of the week – and was subsequently covered by Sammy Hagar.

While Richard Williams was editor of Time Out, John had written articles on Eric Clapton and QPR’s Stan Bowles, and when Williams assumed editorship of Melody Maker, John returned to music journalism, writing the first major article on the Police in 1978. (It should have been the cover story, but Williams went for the Cramps instead.)

By 1979 he was writing documentary series for Capital Radio, where The Story Of Pop's producer Tim Blackmore was now Head of Music. 1980’s look back at the music of the previous decade, Making Waves: The Sound Of The Seventies, involved weeks in the States recording interviews, including one memorable day in LA when he interviewed Alice Cooper, Emmylou Harris and Norman Whitfield, who kept him waiting while he loudly sacked a band from his label, then dropped by Michael Jackson’s house in the Valley where John recorded himself asking fourteen-year-old Janet Jackson questions which she relayed to her brother before he would answer.

The Sounds Of The City, a musical history of London from skiffle, via pub-rock, to punk, followed, then Ebony And Ivory, tracing the links between black and white music. John also devised and produced a pair of long-running series presented by Roger Scott, Jukebox Saturday Night and The View From The Top. Between 1986 and 1989 he also produced and wrote for Capital’s ground-breaking comedy show Brunch, whose regular performers included Angus Deayton and Jan Ravens.

Following Roger Scott’s move to Radio 1 in 1988, John devised Classic Albums, which he and Scott pitched to the network as an independent production. John missed BBC Radio’s first briefing for would-be independents because he was delivering programme masters of that first series, which opened with Mark Knopfler on Brothers In Arms.

John set up his own production company after Scott’s 1989 death, and John Pidgeon Productions converted from analogue to digital technology at its Kent studio in 1995 and was rebranded as Gilmour Broadcasting in 1996. The company made music and comedy programmes for BBC Radios 1 and 2. John’s personal highlights include: documentaries on Crowded House and Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse for Radio 1; four series of the award-winning Talking Comedy, bringing the likes of Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Harry Hill, Mark Lamarr, Graham Norton and Alexei Sayle to Radio 2; Chic Murray: The Comic’s Comic, presented by Robbie Coltrane, Everything You Needed To Know About Busking with John Hegley, Frying Tonight, a history of fish and chips with Rick Stein, and Spinal Tap: All The Way To 11, voiced by an appropriately deadpan Bob Harris, for the same network.

In 1999, at fifty-two, he was unexpectedly approached by the BBC to run Radio Entertainment, and over the next six years reinvigorated the in-house production unit’s comedy output, nurturing Dead Ringers, Little Britain and The Mighty Boosh, and making Ross Noble a Just A Minute regular at twenty-five. He became a Fellow of the Radio Academy in 2003.

After six years at the BBC, he returned to the real world, and has since produced Music To Die For, a Radio 4 series about the use of music in modern crime fiction, presented by Inspector Rebus’s creator Ian Rankin. In the course of making the series, he met most of his favourite crime writers, and renewed contact with the Police’s Andy Summers, who was name-checked in Robert Crais’s debut Elvis Cole novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat.

Having quit London for Kent in 1987, he and his family moved to a 15th Century cottage and fourteen acres in the Elham Valley twelve years ago, since when the creation of formal and informal gardens, an orchard, kitchen garden, arboretum and vernacular woodland has been a consuming love affair, rather than a hobby. Phew, rock and roll!