Annie Nightingale

Annie Avril Nightingale (born 1 April 1940) is an English radio and television broadcaster. She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1970, and is its longest-serving presenter.

Early life and career

Nightingale was born in Osterley, Middlesex on 1 April 1940, the daughter of Celia and Basil Nightingale.Rogers, Jude (30 August 2020)
"Annie Nightingale: 'If I can play what I like and say what I like, that’s the dream'"
''The Guardian''. Retrieved 27 June 2021. After attending St Catherine's School, Twickenham, Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, Middlesex (by scholarship), and the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) School of Journalism, Nightingale began her career as a journalist in Brighton, East Sussex.

During the early to mid-sixties Nightingale explored opportunities working in television, both as a reporter for BBC's Southampton /Bristol based news programme South Today and light entertainment and music programmes for the ITV Network Southern TV (now Meridien TV.)

Nightingale had joined the weekly Brighton and Hove Gazette as a general reporter. A year later she was promoted to the Brighton Evening Argus, as a general reporter, feature writer, and diarist. The latter involved interviews with Sean Connery in his first James Bond role and Peter Sellars on location. She became the newspaper’s first pop music columnist.

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. Nightingale joined Associated-Rediffusion TV and hosted her own show That's For Me. Nightingale presented the pop culture show, booked guest musicians who had not previously been seen on TV such as The Yardbirds and introduced The Who’s first promotion film. At this time, she also hosted other specials for A-R, including The Glad Rag Ball at Wembley, starring the Rolling Stones, and the British Song Festival in Brighton. She also covered the San Remo Song Festival, Italy. Nightingale made numerous appearances on Ready Steady Go and was a guest on their uproarious New Year's Eve Specials, which included 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 star actor and 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-sixties, inspired by her friend Pauline Boty, the distinguished 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 the Duke Of Norfolk at Arundel Castle, West Sussex. She also became a well-known fashion model at the time, with sessions with such photographers as Philip Townsend and Dezo Hoffman.

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. Later and until the mid-eighties, she wrote regularly for the Sunday Mirror and wrote music columns for The Daily Sketch and The Daily Express.

It was the huge impact of pop pirate ships, broadcasting illegally into Great Britain from international waters, that inspired Nightingale (who was by this time steeped in pop culture) 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
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