Annie Nightingale, who turned the primary feminine disc jockey on BBC Radio 1 in 1970 and remained a well-liked character there till her ultimate present, late final 12 months, died on Jan. 11 at her residence in London. She was 83.
Her household introduced the dying in an announcement however didn’t cite a trigger.
“That is the girl who modified the face and sound of British TV and radio broadcasting ceaselessly,” Annie Mac, a longtime BBC Radio D.J., wrote on Instagram after Ms. Nightingale’s dying.
Ms. Nightingale turned well-known in music circles within the Sixties as a columnist in British newspapers. And he or she was a well-recognized face to stars just like the Beatles, whom she interviewed on the Brighton Hippodrome in 1964.
“As Derek Taylor preferred her, she was welcome at Apple,” the Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn mentioned in an electronic mail, referring to the Beatles’ press officer and the corporate they based in 1968.
In 1967, she utilized to be a D.J. on BBC Radio 1, the pop music outlet that had simply been began in response to the rise of common offshore pirate stations.
However she discovered herself up towards the station’s sexist hiring coverage. She was advised that its all-male D.J. lineup represented “husband substitutes” to the housewives who have been listening, and {that a} girl’s voice would lack the authority of a person’s.
“It got here as an enormous shock,” Ms. Nightingale advised The Impartial in 2015. “I used to be nearly amused. What do you imply, ‘No ladies’? Why not?”
However in October 1969, the BBC supplied her an on-air trial. Earlier than her first look, she advised The Manchester Night Information, “I’m positive that numerous women would make marvelous D.J.s if given the prospect.”
She was employed the following 12 months for a weekday report evaluate program, “What’s New,” and two years later she turned a bunch of a night progressive-rock present, “Sounds of the 70s.” Later within the decade, she turned the host of a Sunday afternoon request present and a music interview program. She hosted quite a lot of different exhibits by way of final 12 months.
“From Day One, I selected the information I needed to play and caught to it ever since,” she mentioned in her autobiography, “Hey Hello Whats up: 5 Many years of Pop Tradition From Britain’s First Feminine DJ.” (2020). “I most popular the evenings, the place I wouldn’t need to introduce playlist tunes I didn’t like. That may have been like mendacity to me.”
Anne Avril Nightingale was born on April 1, 1940, within the Osterley district of London. Her father, Basil, labored within the household’s wallpaper enterprise. Her mom, Celia, was a foot physician. As a woman, Anne listened to kids’s applications on her father’s radio and got here to like that it might tune in to distant cities.
“I nonetheless really feel while you’re broadcasting, you don’t know the place it’s going and it may very well be reaching outer area someplace, and I’m nonetheless in love with that, fully,” she mentioned in an interview in 2018.
After graduating from the Woman Eleanor Holles Faculty, she studied journalism at Regent Avenue Polytechnic (now the College of Westminster) in London. She started her journalism profession quickly after, first as a reporter for The Brighton and Hove Gazette after which at The Argus, in Brighton, the place she wrote a music column referred to as Spin With Me. She later wrote a music column for a nationwide tabloid, The Every day Sketch.
In 1964, she collaborated with the pop group the Hollies on a guide, “The way to Run a Beat Group.”
She discovered a measure of tv fame on BBC’s “Juke Field Jury,” the place she was a part of a visitor panel that reviewed new report releases, and because the host of “That’s For Me,” a report request program on ITV, and the Rediffusion community’s quiz present, “Sing a Track of Sixpence,” each in 1965.
However she was finest identified for her time at BBC Radio 1, which started with some rocky moments due to her inexperience — just like the time there was eight seconds of useless airtime when she unintentionally pressed an “off” change whereas a report was taking part in.
“What I discovered tough in these early days was being unhealthy technically,” she advised The Western Every day Press of Bristol in 1979. “Each time I made a mistake I assumed they’d all say, ‘Oh sure, girl driver!’”
She remained the one feminine D.J. on BBC Radio 1 — the “token girl,” she mentioned — for 12 years. In 2010, when she was greater than midway by way of her forty first 12 months there, Guinness World Data cited her for having had the longest profession ever for a feminine D.J. (That report has since been surpassed twice, by the Peruvian broadcaster Maruja Venegas Salinas and Mary McCoy, a D.J. in Texas.)
“It was not till the Nineteen Nineties and the ‘girlification’ of Radio 1 with the likes of Sara Cox, Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball that Nightingale’s exceptionality turned her longevity and impression somewhat than her gender alone,” Lucy Robinson, a professor on the College of Sussex, and Dr. Jeannine Baker, who on the time was with Macquarie College, wrote on the BBC web site.
Ms. Nightingale’s success went past radio. In 1978, she was named a bunch of BBC’s reside music tv present “The Previous Gray Whistle Take a look at,” the place she targeted on new wave music.
After John Lennon was killed on Dec. 8, 1980, Ms. Nightingale and members of the “Whistle Take a look at” workers have been attempting to spherical up individuals to speak about him. Throughout this system, a producer appeared within the studio and advised Ms. Nightingale, “Paul’s on the cellphone and he needs to talk to you.”
“I had no thought who he meant,” she recalled on the podcast “I Am the Eggpod” in 2018. It was Paul McCartney.
“He needed to say thanks on behalf of Linda and himself and Yoko and George and Ringo,” she mentioned. “And that’s what actually obtained me.” She added: “I obtained again in entrance of the digital camera and it’s reside and I assumed proper, proper, you’re the messenger. And he mentioned, ‘You understand how it was.’”
Ms. Nightingale’s survivors embody a son, Alex, and a daughter, Lucy, whose title was impressed partly by the Beatles tune “Lucy within the Sky With Diamonds.” Her marriages to Gordon Thomas, a author, and Binky Baker, an actor, led to divorce.
All through her profession, Ms. Nightingale championed new music — from progressive rock to acid home to grime.
She described her visceral connection to new music when she was interviewed in 2020 on the favored BBC Radio 4 program “Desert Island Discs.”
“It’s a thrill, it’s completely so thrilling,” she mentioned. “I truly get a bodily sensation. I get shivers up and down my legs once I hear one thing that turns into very profitable.”
