Hobbs's choice as she turns the tables and opts to teach

"I was living on a bus with a rock band and writing my own fanzine when I was 18," she says. After getting her first journalism job a year later, she went on to work for the NME and was part of the team that founded Loaded magazine, before joining the BBC as a Radio 1 DJ.

Now, after 14 years, Hobbs is leaving her weekly show championing new dance music, to take up a teaching job at Sheffield University.

The 46-year-old DJ and music writer will take up her new role at the university's students' union newspaper, radio and TV stations, in October.

She took the decision having spent the past 12 months doing volunteer mentoring work at the university.

"I have a done a lot of radical things but life is about seizing opportunities when they come your way, and after 24 hours of soul-searching, I realised this is what wanted to do."

Although Hobbs has enjoyed a successful career as a DJ and radio and TV presenter, it belies a troubled home life growing up in Lancashire.

"My dad banned music from the house and he would smash up records if he found them, but he didn't find this tiny transistor radio that I had.

"I used to listen to John Peel's show late at night under the duvet and he opened me up to a whole new universe and I wanted to be part of that world."

After becoming a music journalist, she got a job as a DJ on XFM and it was while working there that she got her big break with the BBC.

"I was supposed to be speaking to this grunge band called Mudhoney and, instead, I was asked to interview the head of Radio 1 Production. Back then, the questioning style was extremely confrontational and I dragged this guy over hot coals.

"But unbeknown to me, the interview was bootlegged around the BBC and it eventually landed on the desk of Matthew Bannister who was the Radio 1 controller at the time, and he really wanted me on board."

This gave her the opportunity to work alongside the legendary Peel.

"He became like a surrogate father and I had the good fortune to work with him for nearly 10 years. As a broadcaster and as a man, he was inspirational.

"I remember I was racking my brain for something to buy him for his 65th birthday and in the end I got him this pink neon light which read 'dream dad' in giant letters; the day I gave it to him was the last time I saw him. But I'm so glad I let him know how much he meant to me," she says.

"He had accrued so much knowledge, and when he died I remember thinking what a shame it was that he didn't have the opportunity to share all his wonderful knowledge with the next generation.

"I didn't want to find myself in the same position; I want to pass on all that I've learnt."

Hobbs's show champions all kinds of experimental dance music and she is full of praise for the BBC, which she believes plays a crucial role when it comes to promoting culture and the arts in the UK.

"It commits so much time and resources to radical artists who simply wouldn't get the air time anywhere else. Radio 1 has, for me, been the most amazing platform, and I have been blessed in that for 14 years I've been allowed, without any interference, to play some of the most radical, creative and incendiary music."

She believes that the downloading revolution has transformed the musical landscape for the better.

"There's been this explosion in the last two or three years so that people are now able to make world-class music themselves and put it on a global online network in 10 minutes.

"This has been a great leveller and it's meant the major record labels have become redundant."

This has, in turn, helped breathe new life into radio programmes.

"There are so many specialist DJs who are finding fresh new sounds, and if you look at the number of online radio stations, it's incredible.

"Listeners now have a myriad of choices, and I believe that these are fantastic times for music."