Annie Nightingale
Annie Avril Nightingale was an English radio and television broadcaster. She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1970 and the first female presenter for BBC Television's The Old Grey Whistle Test, where she stayed for four years.
Nightingale specialised in championing new and underground music, and encouraged other women to become DJs and broadcasters. She was the longest-serving broadcaster in BBC Radio 1's history and held the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a female radio presenter.
Early life and education
Anne Avril Nightingale was born in Osterley, Middlesex, England, on 1 April 1940, the daughter and only child of Celia and Basil Nightingale. Her father ran a family wallpaper business. She attended St Catherine's School, Twickenham beginning at age five, although her family was not Catholic. She became a fan of blues music as a teenager. She later attended Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, Middlesex, and the School of Journalism at the Polytechnic of Central London.Journalism and television career
Nightingale began her career as a journalist in Brighton, East Sussex. She spent a short time at the Brighton and Hove Gazette as a general reporter, and then moved to become the only woman in the newsroom at The Argus in Brighton. She wrote a pop music column called Spin With Me and worked as a general reporter, court reporter, feature writer, and diarist. The last capacity involved interviews with Sean Connery in his first James Bond role, and Peter Sellers on location. She later recalled facing little overt sexism at the paper, and that she was allowed to publish feminist pieces.During the early to mid-1960s, Nightingale worked in television, both as a reporter for BBC's Southampton- and Bristol-based news programme South Today, and light entertainment and music programmes for the ITV network's regional station Southern TV.
In the early 1960s, as a result of meeting Dusty Springfield and her manager Vicki Wickham, editor of the new ground-breaking pop TV show Ready Steady Go!, Nightingale was invited to host a new sister TV show. She joined Associated-Rediffusion TV and hosted her own show in the 1960s, That's For Me. Nightingale presented the pop culture show, booked guest musicians who had not previously been seen on television such as the Yardbirds, and introduced the Who's first promotion film. At this time, she also hosted other specials for Associated-Rediffusion, including The Glad Rag Ball at Wembley, starring the Rolling Stones, and the British Song Festival in Brighton. She also covered the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy. Nightingale made numerous appearances on Ready Steady Go! and was a guest on their New Year's Eve Specials, which included some of the biggest pop, soul and rock stars of the era.
The following year, Nightingale co-hosted the music series Sing A Song Of Sixpence with host Ronan O'Casey. Later she appeared in the BBC TV series A Whole Scene Going, and made appearances on Juke Box Jury with such artists as Marianne Faithfull.
In the mid-1960s, inspired by her friend Pauline Boty, a pop art painter, she launched a chain of fashion boutiques, as a 'front person' and publicist. This swiftly became a chain called Snob. Nightingale put on fashion shows and took part in them, notably a charity show for Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, at Arundel Castle, West Sussex. She also became a well-known fashion model, with sessions with photographers including Philip Townsend and Dezo Hoffmann. At this time Nightingale wrote regular columns and was both featured in and a feature-writer for leading youth magazines such as Town, Fabulous, Honey 19, and Petticoat. She specialised in writing about teen issues, burgeoning feminist perspectives and social issues. Nightingale also wrote for the music magazine Disc and Music Echo. Nightingale was the pop music columnist and feature writer for Cosmopolitan when it launched in the UK in 1970. Later and until the mid-1980s, she wrote regularly for the Sunday Mirror, and penned music columns for the Daily Sketch and the Daily Express.
Early in the 1970s, Nightingale hosted a documentary film series for BBC One, Before The Event. The series was filmed across the UK in locations such as The Lake District and Derbyshire. The series recorded the build-up to major events in the British sporting calendar, such as the Hennessy Gold Cup steeplechase and the Formula 1 British Grand Prix motor race at Silverstone. A little later, she appeared in her first feature film, Home Before Midnight, starring James Aubrey and Chris Jagger. Nightingale played a talk show TV host and was billed as playing the part of herself.
Nightingale worked with BBC TV on The Old Grey Whistle Test for four years. In 1978, she became the show's main presenter, as a replacement for long-time host Bob Harris. During her tenure, the show moved away from its traditional bias under Harris towards country music, blues rock and progressive rock and embraced popular modern styles such as punk rock and new wave. She left the series in 1982. During her tenure on the show, Nightingale introduced and championed artists including The Ramones, The Adverts, Talking Heads, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Public Image Ltd, Gang of Four, Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Au Pairs, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Blondie, Robert Fripp, John Cooper Clarke, U2, The Clash, Wreckless Eric, Nina Hagen, Elvis Costello and The Attractions, X-Ray Spex, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Adam and The Ants, The Teardrop Explodes, The Damned, Madness, The Specials, The Selecter, The Undertones. Nightingale interviewed artists for the show, including Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor, Jeff Beck, Frank Zappa, Dusty Springfield and Paul Simon.
In December 1980 Nightingale presented a special edition immediately after the murder of John Lennon. This particular episode consisted almost entirely of interviews with various people about Lennon's life and career.
She worked further with the BBC team, presenting long-running shows such as Late Night In Concert in addition to her weekly The Old Grey Whistle Test slot and Christmas specials.
In 1980, Nightingale accompanied The Police on their first world tour, which included places that had seldom hosted foreign performers—including Mexico, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Greece and Egypt, with the tour filmed for a documentary.
For Live Aid in 1985, Nightingale was commissioned by the Live Aid team to be the BBC's sole presenter at the Philadelphia US special. She commentated and presented, introducing artists including Duran Duran, Madonna, the Pretenders, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and Crosby Stills and Nash.
Between 1989 and 1990, Nightingale hosted an interview TV series for ITV entitled One To One. She conducted in-depth interviews with Debbie Harry, Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Peter Gabriel, John Taylor of Duran Duran, Mike Oldfield and Status Quo.
In her later years, Nightingale wrote for The Guardian, The Times, Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator.
Radio career
Presenter and writer
1963–1969
Nightingale‘s first broadcast on the BBC was on 14 September 1963 as a panellist on Juke Box Jury, and she contributed to Woman's Hour from January 1964 and hosted programmes such as Melody Fare on the BBC Light Programme in 1966.She briefly worked at Radio Luxembourg in the 1960s.
Nightingale, at the time a pop music columnist, was inspired by pop pirate ships, broadcasting into Great Britain from international waters, to want to become a disc jockey. The pirate ships were outlawed by the UK government and shut down. Prime Minister Harold Wilson decreed that the BBC would run a new pop music station on land from London to replace them. This became BBC Radio 1, and was launched in September 1967. It was decreed by the production teams launching Radio 1, that there would be no women on air. Nightingale applied for a job as a Radio 1 DJ but was firmly rejected on the grounds of being a woman. Radio 1 decreed that its all-male DJ team were 'husband substitutes', and that a woman among them would alienate what they perceived to be a mostly female audience. Nightingale persisted for three years, and was only given a chance to audition by her friends The Beatles and their staff at Apple Records.
1970–1981
Nightingale was given a trial run of six programmes before she was signed as the first female DJ on Radio 1. Her early shows were stressful, as she was not taught how to use the station's technology and her male coworkers were unfriendly. However, she did form a friendship with John Peel. Nightingale started at BBC Radio 1 on 8 February 1970 with a Sunday evening show. However, after a trial run on Sunday nights, her first shows were daytime afternoon slots, handed over from Terry Wogan. In April 1970 she became one of the hosts of the singles review show What's New before graduating to a late-night progressive rock show, Sounds of the 70s, with Alan Black, John Peel, Bob Harris, Pete Drummond, and Mike Harding which was simulcast on the BBC Radio 2's FM frequency. Nightingale remained the only female DJ at Radio 1 for 12 years, from 1970 until 1982 when she was joined by Janice Long. By then, Nightingale was granted her request to broadcast her show in the evenings, which gave her more scope to play emerging underground and experimental music.Nightingale hosted a Sunday afternoon request show on Radio 1 from September 1975 till 1979. The show was one of the first on British radio to regularly play music from CDs, taking advantage of its FM carriage before BBC Radio 1 had its own higher-quality frequencies.
From 1979 till 1982, Nightingale hosted a breakthrough Radio 1 Friday night music chat show, featuring live studio guests including Clive James, Rowan Atkinson, Michael Palin, Sting, Duran Duran and the Who.