Annie Nightingale: How Radio 1’s first feminine presenter and longest-serving broadcaster modified the business ceaselessly

“Our disc jockeys are husband substitutes,” Annie Nightingale was instructed when she knocked on Radio 1’s door following it is launch in 1967. So why on Earth, they stated, would a girl would need to be a part of the airwaves?

“They were bewildered,” Nightingale instructed Desert Island Disc’s presenter Lauren Laverne, throughout her look on the much-loved radio present in 2020.

The male bosses had been bewildered, however Nightingale was decided. Not solely was she the primary girl to affix the station, in 1970 – remaining the one feminine host till Janice Long’s arrival 12 years later – she was additionally its longest-serving broadcaster, male or feminine, nonetheless on air till late final yr with Annie Nightingale presents…

She was a good friend of The Beatles and David Bowie, however extra importantly supported waves of widespread music genres together with prog rock, German electronica, punk, acid home and dirt. Now highlighted following her demise at 83, her affect on the world of British music tradition can’t be overstated.

Even into her 80s, she was a champion of latest music. Look at her Desert Island Discs selections and also you see a mixture together with John Lennon and Bowie, sure, but additionally Billie Eilish and Beyonce, interspersed with Ethel Merman and Sid Vicious.

While most of us flip to the music of our early life and early maturity once we consider the songs which have outlined our lives, Nightingale was consistently absorbing the brand new, at all times with an ear for these artists who would possibly change into stars. “You want to hear something you’ve never heard before,” she instructed Laverne, quoting the late John Peel. “Something that surprises you.”

Nightingale was born in Osterley, now a part of outer west London however then a part of Middlesex, on 1 April 1940. She began her profession as a journalist in Brighton and first broadcast on the BBC in 1963 as a panellist on the TV present Juke Box Jury.

It was in Brighton the place she first interviewed The Beatles, and he or she went on to change into a frequent visitor on the band’s Apple Studios in London in the course of the Sixties – a front-row seat to one of the vital inventive intervals in British widespread music.

She knew about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s relationship earlier than it was made public, however didn’t report what she knew could be a headline-making story as she didn’t need to break her bond of belief with the band.

And Paul McCartney even proposed to her on one event, in line with the BBC. “Well, sort of yes,” she stated when requested about it in an interview. “But I don’t think he was serious!”

‘I hate the R phrase’

Nightingale stated she had not likely skilled sexism till she was “rebuffed” by Radio 1.

But in 1969, a brand new controller arrived who wished a feminine DJ, and requested The Beatles’ publicist for a advice. Her first present was a catastrophe technically, she stated, but it surely was the beginning of an unbelievable profession.

As a DJ she travelled the world, telling The Independent in 2009 that she had been “mugged in Cuba, drugged in Baghdad and bugged in Russia”.

She was additionally the primary girl to current music present The Old Grey Whistle Test, from 1978, which featured reside efficiency from artists as various as Bob Marley, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Roxy Music and Randy Newman.

She would say in interviews how she had no plans to decelerate. “I hate the ‘R’ word: retire,” she instructed This Is Money simply six months in the past. “I don’t want to watch daytime TV.”

Nightingale obtained an MBE in 2002 and a CBE for providers to radio in 2020, which she described because the “coolest big-up ever”.

Her memoir Hey Hi Hello was launched in 2020 and supplied a glance again at her 5 a long time on the forefront of widespread music tradition in Britain, coming after earlier autobiographical books Chase The Fade: Music Memoirs And Memorabilia in 1981, and Wicked Speed in 1999.

A ‘trailblazer’ and ‘legend’

In 2021, a scholarship for feminine and non-binary music DJs was launched by Radio 1 and named after Nightingale, aiming to “celebrate and elevate talented women and non-binary people in the electronic music scene”.

She stored going, a task mannequin who rallied towards not simply sexism however ageism, too, a much-loved favorite and authoritative voice on music into her 80s, on a station whose audience is 15-29 yr olds.

“She kept going, her very existence as an older woman playing underground music on Radio 1 was subversive,” stated Annie Mac in her tribute.

For Mac and the opposite feminine presenters who adopted in Nightingale’s footsteps – the likes of Zoe Ball, Jo Whiley, Sara Cox, Fearne Cotton and Clara Amfo – she was a “trailblazer”, a “legend”, “the coolest woman who ever graced the airwaves”; a girl who broke down doorways throughout a time when the business was pervaded by sexism, and held them open to interrupt the misogyny down, little by little, over greater than 50 years.

“Thank you, Annie,” stated Laverne, sharing a photograph of her dialog with Nightingale. “For opening the door and for showing us all what to do when we got through it.”