Annie Nightingale, legendary DJ and BBC Radio 1’s first female presenter – obituary

Annie Nightingale, who has died aged 83, was the BBC’s longest continuously serving disc jockey, having joined Radio 1 in 1969 to become the pop network’s first female presenter.

She was nearly 30 when Radio 1 bosses reluctantly installed her as the token woman, but her obscure evening slot suited her famously husky tones perfectly and she always felt more comfortable at the edges of the schedule where the niche audiences tend to gather.

During her early years on the air, she morphed her persona from that of suburban girl-next-door to archetypal rock chick, and few would have disputed her claim to have become the “queen of Radio 1”.

Annie Nightingale and Paul McCartney in 1976 – Ltd/REX/Shutterstock

Anne Nightingale (as she was originally styled) came from a background in provincial newspapers and applied her journalistic nous to the notoriously flaky business of interviewing pop stars. She grilled members of the Beatles (“So, John Lennon, you’re the difficult one”), Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones (“very shrewd”), Jimi Hendrix (“charming”), Jim Morrison (“a bit of an arse”) and Marc Bolan (“hilarious”).

Her radio shows championed many previously unknown artists including David Bowie, Ian Dury and Basement Jaxx, although she told her friend Jimmy Page that his band was doomed with its “ridiculous name, Led Zeppelin”.

She became a household name hosting a Sunday night request show that followed the Top 40 but she was not a fan of 1980s music and considered leaving broadcasting to do other things. But she was galvanised by the acid house movement of the 1990s, and one epic rave she hosted at her own home in Brighton lasted six days.

She always avoided playing oldies, obsessively hunting down the latest, most obscure music like a street-smart teenager, even well into her seventies. “I’m very weird, aren’t I?” she told The Daily Telegraph in 2016.

Left to right: BBC DJs Emperor Rosko, Alan Freeman, Annie Nightingale and Johnnie Walker in 1976 – Mirrorpix

“I remember Jagger saying most people associate with music in their extreme youth, then they get into relationships, buy a flat, other things take over. But that’s never happened to me. I’m not trying to get down with the kids, but if the music I listened to wasn’t constantly changing then I wouldn’t be interested.”

Nor at 76 did she make any concessions to her age when it came to her striking looks, wearing her hair in an explosion of peroxide bunches, sheathed in a leather mini skirt and fishnets, her eyes obscured by her trademark green sunglasses.

She endured her share of misfortunes. In 1988 her drink was spiked with the date-rape drug Rohypnol while recording a radio show in Iraq, and she woke up without her knickers. When she was mugged in Cuba in 1996, her right leg was shattered and she spent several months on crutches.

In the second decade of the millennium she continued to broadcast on Radio 1 in a slot between 1am and 3am featuring breakbeat, grime, dubstep and other cutting-edge musical genres and fashions.

Annie Nightingale photographed by the Telegraph in 2016 – Andrew Crowley

Anne Avril Nightingale was born on April 1 1940 in Osterley, west London, and educated at St Catherine’s convent school in Twickenham and Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton. In her early teens she developed a love of the blues at a commune on nearby Eel Pie Island, and after gaining a diploma in journalism at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster), joined the Brighton and Hove Gazette and later the Evening Argus where she wrote a pop music column.

Her work appeared in the Daily Express and Daily Sketch, and from 1975 she contributed to Cosmopolitan magazine.

By then her transition into broadcasting was well under way, having hosted a television pop show with Keith Fordyce in the mid-1960s called That’s For Me. She also made early appearances on Juke Box Jury (1963) and A Whole Scene Going. On radio some of her interviews were broadcast on Today and Woman’s Hour, and she did a short stint on Radio Luxembourg before the BBC invited her to host a Sunday night slot in October 1969 by way of a try-out.

She thought Radio 1 was run on testosterone by RAF types who had trained as wartime technicians. “It was quite unbelievably sexist,” she remembered. “They said a woman’s voice wouldn’t carry on the air waves, that DJs were substitute husband material, that I would alienate other women. I thought I’d last a year, I really did.”

Annie Nightingale in 1970 – Popperfoto

In 1970 Anne Nightingale joined the rota on What’s New reviewing the week’s pop record releases, and between 1975 and 1979 she hosted a Sunday afternoon request show. By then she had taken over from Bob Harris on BBC Two’s The Old Grey Whistle Test (1978-1982).

Her Sunday evening Radio 1 request show started its 12 year run in 1982. The programme is remembered for her championing new bands as well as for her succinct opening greeting – “Hi!” – just before the vocals of the first track. In the 1990s she hosted a weekly show in the small hours of Saturday night and Sunday morning called The Chill Out Zone, with a mix of dance music aimed at homegoing clubbers.

Annie Nightingale survived several BBC presenter culls, partly by requesting the night-time “specialist” slots rather than the daytime charts-dominated shows. “I’m very aware it could all come to an end very quickly, you’re only as good as your last show,” she told the Telegraph. “One bad tune and you’re gone – boom. Only the very best gets played and I agonise over what to choose. I’d still hate to think I was missing out on something brilliant.”

Bob Harris and Annie Nightingale on the set of the BBC Two television programme The Old Grey Whistle Test, c1978 – Tim Roney

In 2001 was named “caner of the year” for her full-on appearances on the Ibiza party circuit. In 2004 she was the first female Radio 1 presenter to be inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Westminster in 2012.

With The Hollies, she wrote How to Form a Beat Group (1965), and later published volumes of memoir, Chase the Fade (1982), Wicked Speed (1999) and in 2020, to mark the 50th anniversary of her first broadcast on Radio 1, Hey Hi Hello: five decades of pop culture from Britain’s first female DJ.

Annie Nightingale was appointed MBE in 2000 and CBE in 2020.

She was twice married, first, in 1978, to Anthony “Binky” Baker, famous for having poured a port and brandy over Tony Blackburn during a Radio 1 “fun day” at Mallory Park. With her second husband, the journalist and novelist Gordon Thomas, a cousin of the poet Dylan Thomas, she had two children. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Annie Nightingale, born April 1 1940, died January 11 2024

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