Annie Nightingale MBE |
|
---|---|
Birth name | Anne Avril Nightingale |
Born |
Osterley, London, England |
1 April 1940
Show | Annie Nightingale |
Station(s) | BBC Radio 1 |
Time slot | Wednesday 01:00 - 04:00 |
Style | Disc Jockey |
Website | BBC Radio 1 minisite |
Anne Avril "Annie" Nightingale, MBE (born 1 April 1940) is an English radio and television broadcaster. She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 and is its longest-serving presenter.
After attending Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, southwest London, 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. In the 1960s and 1970s, she wrote columns for the Daily Express, the Daily Sketch, Petticoat and Cosmopolitan magazine.
Her first broadcast on the BBC was on 14 September 1963 as a panellist on Juke Box Jury, and she contributed to Woman's Hour in 1964 and hosted programmes on the BBC Light Programme in 1966.
She started at Radio 1 on 5 October 1969 with a Sunday evening show. Later she then hosted the singles review show What's New in the early 1970s before graduating to a late-night progressive rock show, which was simulcast on the Radio 2 FM frequency.
In the mid-late 1970s, she presented a Sunday afternoon request show, and in the early 1980s she presented a Friday night show and the non-music-based Radio 1 Mailbag and Talkabout.
In 1978, Nightingale became the main presenter of the The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2 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.