It's very sad news that Janice has passed away. She was a complete music enthusiast, knowledgeable without wearing badges about it sewn to her sleeve, and with a good humoured nature that was a complete breath of fresh air.
Out of the blue in the last year, I got an email from her producer asking if I'd like to record a session and an interview for her show on BBC Radio Wales. It was completely unexpected, and it was touching to be remembered after all these years. A couple of days before the show she phoned for a chat and told me about coming to see Helen and the Horns with her husband, with her baby in the pram. It was like talking to a close pal, and I vowed to visit her in Liverpool once everything went back to normal; you could feel the warmth through the phone, and I remember feeling just that when she used to do her Radio 1 show back in the day. Janice was tactful (she knew stuff about my personal life and didn't even go there) and hugely supportive.
She was really on the ball with what was happening in music, and after the show I followed up some of the other music she played. Back in the day, her show was a great launchpad for John Peel's later-evening and more esoteric musical offerings. I had just sent her a message to ask how she was, and didn't want to believe that she was ill enough not to be able to recover. Such a lovely person, and such a loss. She was one of us.
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