What is John Peelposting?

John Peelposting is a Twitter reply format that uses the voice and image of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel to turn weird word combinations in other people's tweets into fake band names.

Where did John Peelposting come from?

The format appeared on British Twitter around late 2019 or early 2020, with user RobDotHutton posting one of the earliest documented examples on January 28th, 2020.

What does John Peelposting mean?

It means reframing someone else's tweet as if Peel had just finished introducing a song on his late-night BBC Radio 1 show, usually with the phrasal template 'And That Was X'.

How do you use John Peelposting?

Reply to a tweet with 'And that was,' followed by the odd words from the original post styled as a band name, alongside the reaction image of Peel at his mixing table.

Is John Peelposting still popular?

The format saw its heaviest run under Fesshole posts through early 2023, drawing enough replies that Fesshole itself commented on the fatigue in March 2023.

John Peelposting

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Published October 18, 2026

John Peelposting is a reply format where UK Twitter users imitate radio DJ John Peel introducing a fake band whose name is lifted from the strange words in whatever tweet they are quoting, usually alongside a photo of Peel at his mixing desk. The habit took hold on British Twitter in early 2020 and later turned into a running joke under the anonymous confessions account Fesshole by 2023.

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Overview

A typical John Peelposting reply opens with 'And that was' followed by whatever absurd noun pile the original tweet produced, delivered as if Peel just introduced a song by that band on his late-night BBC Radio 1 show3. The response usually sits under a photo of Peel seated behind his mixing table mid-broadcast. The joke works because Peel's actual career featured hundreds of obscure guitar acts with willfully strange names, so any random collision of words plausibly sounds like a real session he once aired.

Replies often extend the gag with a track title or the venue Peel supposedly recorded it at, written as if lifted from a studio log. The format rewards tweets that already read like garbled nonsense, news headlines about freak accidents, poorly worded confessions, or lists of mismatched objects4.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Date

2020

John Peelposting appeared on Twitter in late 2019 or early 2020, though no single first post has been pinned down3. On January 28th, 2020, user twlldun observed that 'the hipsters are all into the John Peel session band name meme now,' and user RobDotHutton answered the same day with a working example reply1. That exchange is the earliest documented sighting flagged by Know Your Meme.

How It Spread

British Twitter kept returning to the Peel image whenever a tweet surfaced with an odd word combination. On August 29th, 2022, @youwouldknow used it to answer a tweet about French pilots getting into a fistfight inside the cockpit2. A couple of months later, on October 21st, @miserablepig applied the same gag beneath a LAD Bible tweet4.

The format latched onto Fesshole, an anonymous confessions account, where almost every post in early 2023 drew at least one Peel reply3. Fesshole posted on March 29th, 2023 that readers had started complaining about the Peel saturation under its tweets, though the replies kept arriving anyway5.

A John Peelposting reply typically starts with 'And that was' followed by the odd words lifted from the original tweet, posed as a band name. Common conventions include adding a track title or the venue Peel supposedly recorded it at. The response often includes the reaction image of Peel seated at his mixing table to seal the delivery.

Timeline

2020-01-28

User twlldun flags the John Peel session band name reply as a thing hipsters are doing; RobDotHutton posts a working example on Twitter the same day.

2022-08-29

@youwouldknow applies John Peelposting to a tweet about French pilots fighting in a cockpit.

2022-10-21

@miserablepig uses the format in reply to a LAD Bible tweet.

2023-03-29

Fesshole posts user complaints about the saturation of John Peel replies under its anonymous confessions.