Scotsman Obituaries: Annie Nightingale, legendary DJ who was a fixture at Radio 1 for five decades

Annie Nightingale CBE, DJ and broadcaster. Born: 1 April, 1940 in Osterley, Middlesex. Died: 11 January, 2024 in London, aged 83​

Annie Nightingale pictured in a 1964 publicity shot for her TV show That's For Me (Picture: John Pratt/Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Annie Nightingale was a remarkable broadcaster, a non-conformist who became a national institution, claiming firsts and breaking records throughout her career. She was the first – and for 12 years the only – female presenter on Radio 1, joining the station in 1970, and also the first female presenter of The Old Grey Whistle Test, a bastion of muso snooze until Nightingale injected some punk energy.

Never losing her love of new music, Nightingale became a Guinness World Record holder as longest-serving female radio presenter. She was inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame in 2004 and received an OBE, then a CBE for services to broadcasting, but said she was most proud of her Muzik magazine award for Caner of the Year in 2001.

Her accolades were hard won. In the late Sixties she persisted in applying to join the newly launched Radio 1 despite their policy of employing male presenters as proxy husbands for their presumed female audience. Following repeated rejections from the nascent station, Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor helped to grease the wheels and in late 1969 Anne Nightingale, as she was known then, was offered a trial run of six shows. “I thought I’d last a year,” she said. She remained with the station until her death, aged 83.

Annie Nightingale arrives at the Women of The Year Lunch in London in 2010 (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Nightingale was best known as the voice of the Sunday afternoon request show, which ran from 1975-1994, with a three-year hiatus at the turn of the Eighties during which she presented a Friday night music chat show.

In her time she interviewed music legends including The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Marc Bolan and called The Beatles, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page her friends. She once bet Joe Strummer a Cadillac that The Clash’s new single London Calling was a surefire Top Ten hit. The track reached Number 11.

She regularly crossed the tracks to appear on Radio 4’s The Today Programme and fronted music documentaries such as the groundbreaking Police in the East, following the band at the height of their success on tour in Japan, India and Egypt.

She DJed in clubs and at festivals around the world – along the way remarking she had been “mugged in Cuba, drugged in Baghdad and bugged in Russia”. Discovering new music was her fuel and this committed rock chick became an early adopter of acid house and electronic dance music in the late Eighties, restoring her faith in music and sealing her reputation as the doyenne of late nights on Radio 1, where she avoided the strictures of the station playlist. She became known as the Queen of Breaks for her championing of the breakbeat genre and the name of her latest show, Annie Nightingale Presents, attested to her curatorial skills.

Among the many tributes to this broadcasting legend, those of the women who came after her rang out most sincerely. Jo Whiley hailed her as “the coolest woman who ever graced the airwaves”, Lauren Laverne thanked her “for opening the door and for showing us all what to do when we got through it”, while Annie Mac said “her very existence as an older woman playing underground music on Radio 1 was subversive”.

Nightingale wore her trailblazing reputation lightly – she was a music fan first and foremost. “I remember [Mick] 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,” she said. “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.”

She was born Anne Avril Nightingale, only child of Celia and Basil Nightingale, and claimed her first word was “music”. She attended school in Twickenham and Hampton but, having discovered the blues in her teens, couldn’t wait to escape the suburbs for soon-to-be-swinging London, where she studied journalism at Central London Polytechnic.

She eloped with her first husband, Gordon Thomas, a cousin of Dylan Thomas, to Brighton, becoming a reporter on the Brighton and Hove Gazette and then The Argus where, busting the first of many glass ceilings, she was the only woman in the newsroom. In addition to her regular reporter duties, she wrote a pop column – a specialism that continued when she moved into television reporting in the early Sixties, appearing on Juke Box Jury and presenting Ready Steady Go! spin-off That’s For Me, where she was able to exercise her love of new bands by booking The Yardbirds and The Who.

By the mid-Sixties, Nightingale had diversified into fashion and modelling, opening her own boutique chain called Snob, while cultivating a parallel radio career on pirate station Radio Luxembourg.

She found her place on Radio 1 – up the back of the class with fellow maverick John Peel – and helmed the record review show What’s New before settling into the Sunday request show.

Her stint as the main presenter of The Old Grey Whistle Test coincided with the heyday of punk and new wave, which she embraced with alacrity. She also hosted the fertile Late Night In Concert series and helmed the BBC’s coverage of the US leg of Live Aid in 1985.

In 2020, Nightingale’s half century on Radio 1 was marked with accompanying TV documentaries, a compilation album, her (third) memoir Hey Hi Hello and an appearance on Desert Island Discs – she chose David Bowie’s Space Oddity as her ultimate track.

Like Michael Palin and David Frost, she has a BBC vault named after her but the dusty past has never been Nightingale’s thing – as recently as 2021, she launched a scholarship to support young female and non-binary DJ talent.

She is survived by her children, Alex and Lucy.

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