John "Hoppy" Hopkins

John "Hoppy" Hopkins (15 August 1937 – 30 January 2015) was a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, and "one of the best-known underground figures of 'Swinging London' " in the late 1960s. 
In 1958, Hopkins graduated from Cambridge University, which he had entered on a scholarship in 1955, with a degree in physics and mathematics, and began to work as a laboratory technician at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire. When Hopkins took a trip to Moscow to attend a Communist youth festival, his security clearance was revoked.
Hopkins then re-located to London at the beginning of 1960, and began to work as a photographer for newspapers and music magazines including Jazz News, The Guardian, Melody Maker and Peace News. Hopkins photographed many of the leading musicians of the period, including The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He also recorded the seedier side of London, with photographs of tattoo parlours, cafés, prostitutes and fetishists.
(read more on wikipedia)
== Links to Peel ==
John "Hoppy" Hopkins was a CND activist in the early 1960s and took photos for Melody Maker before becoming a key figure of the British underground in 1967. He was a founder of International Times and the co-founder with Joe Boyd of the UFO Club, which JP would frequent in 1967 during periods of shore leave from Radio London. His marriage to Suzy Creamcheese in summer 1967 was covered in the national press, but his arrest and jailing, for allowing his flat to be used for the smoking of cannabis, was seen as a blow to the underground movement and provoked protests. Peel mentioned Hopkins on his 14 August 1967 show, after playing the Purple Gang's "Granny Takes A Trip" on which Hoppy had played piano.:
The Purple Gang, and that featured John Hopkins, “Hoppy”. And that is another sad thing, because Hoppy is still in jail. And let’s hope that very soon something good happens there like happened to the Stones and he can get out and there won’t be any more problems. Anyway, let’s not talk of sad things, because really it is a beautiful occasion.Hoppy also guested on piano on another Perfumed Garden favourite, the Incredible String Band's "The Mad Hatter's Song" from their LP The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion; although a capable pianist he was not primarily a musician. After serving six months of his nine-month prison sentence, he was released and resumed his activities in the underground scene (notably the "information service" BIT, which Peel referred to a few times on Top Gear) but no longer seemed such a central figure. He became more involved with the new medium of video, which was still at the experimental stage. He may have met Peel during one of Steve Bradshaw's "Breakthrough" programmes on BBC Radio London, on which he and the DJ both appeared, but Peel doesn't seem to have referred to him on air or in print after 1969.
== External Links ==
*Wikipedia
*Guardian Obituary
*Official Website
Category:People