FEATURE:
Annie Nightingale: Saluting a Broadcasting Pioneer
IN THIS PHOTO: Anne Nightingale in Brighton promoting the show, That’s for Me (her first T.V. job), in 1964/PHOTO CREDIT: John Pratt/Getty Images
Hey Hi Hello: Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain's First Female DJ
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A few questions come to mind…
PHOTO CREDIT: BBC/David Venni
when I think about the remarkable Annie Nightingale. At eighty years old, she is one of the most influential, long-running broadcasters in the world, so I wonder why she has not been made a Dame. Maybe she would not want such an honour, but I feel there are few more deserving of such a lofty honour than her! I also wonder why Nightingale has not been given a show on BBC Radio 6 Music, as she has the sort of music tastes and eclectic nature that would be perfect for the station! This year, Annie Nightingale celebrates five decades of broadcasting and presenting for the BBC. Annie Nightingale was the first female D.J. on the BBC in 1970, and she holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running radio show on the station. As a D.J. and broadcaster on radio, T.V. and the live music scene, Nightingale has been a hugely important and inspiring force. I will talk about her memoir/new book in a minute, but the fact she is still at BBC Radio 1 after fifty years - where she presents the fabulous Annie Nightingale Presents - is truly inspiring! It is a massive year for a broadcaster who has broken barriers down and inspired a legion of broadcasters/D.J.s around the world. What I love about Annie Nightingale (among other things!) is the fact that she is so relentless cool and curious. There is no slowing her passion for great new music, and she remains one of the most influential and important champions of new music in the world! I heard Nightingale speaking with Gemma Cairney on BBC Radio 6 Music yesterday (3rd September), and she revealed how she admires great young artists like Little Simz and Billie Eilish.
Nightingale is such a fascinating broadcaster and, alongside her BBC Radio 1 colleague, Annie Mac, her guidance and championing is vital. I will move on, but I want to bring in an interview from The Guardian where we learn more about Nightingale’s earliest days, and what it was like joining BBC Radio 1 when there was an all-male line-up:
“Being an only child is fundamental to Nightingale’s personality. She had to reach out to make friends, and she enjoyed being a part of different gangs (which she still does, she says, only now these are pockets of people in different international cities who she’s met through her musical travels).
Her outward-looking nature also went against the experiences of the many suburban women she lived alongside. “They were so competitive with each other, and so isolated – all they had to look forward to was a new washing machine. Very early on, I remember thinking, hang on, this isn’t fantastic.” A small Bakelite wireless bought for Nightingale by her father gave her a glimpse of distant worlds through Radio Luxembourg. By her late teens, she was also partying with jazz-loving beatniks at Eel Pie Island, less than a mile down the road.
She trained as a journalist, and by the mid-1960s had moved to Brighton to work at the local newspaper, the Argus, as a reporter. She covered court reporting, council meetings, and once interviewed a young Sean Connery at a local Wimpy. Here, she also met Ready Steady Go! producer Vicki Wickham, who is still a close friend, backstage at a Dusty Springfield gig.
IN THIS PHOTO: Annie Nightingale in 1970, the year she joined BBC Radio 1 as its first female presenter/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC
Wickham recruited her as a presenter for her first stint on TV, in a short-running TV show, That’s For Me. Later, Nightingale had a pop column at the Argus, Spin With Me, through which she got to know bands well, including the Beatles. (She’s still in touch with Paul McCartney, and wrote the essay for his album reissue of Tug of War and Pipes of Peace in 2015. He also called Annie live on air when she was presenting Old Grey Whistle Test the night after John Lennon died, to get her to pass on thanks to their fans on behalf of him, Yoko, George and Ringo.)
When Radio 1 launched in 1967 with its all-male DJ roster, Nightingale was desperate to join the station, but they didn’t actively look for a female presenter for three years. DJs were viewed as husband substitutes for bored housewives; it was only the Beatles’ press officer Derek Taylor vouching for her, she says, that got her the job, despite her “trying to kick the door down myself”.
There is (quite rightly) a lot of focus on Annie Nightingale right now. I think the fact that there are so many great women in radio can be traced to Nightingale. Of course, it is their talent that got them there, but Nightingale’s appointment on BBC Radio 1 was a huge move, and I am sure she faced a lot of sexism in the early days.
PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Crowley
There are still big radio stations where there is a majority of male broadcasters, and I do hope that this is redressed at a time when sexism and imbalance continues strong – the recent announcement of the all-male (six of them) headliners for next year’s Reading and Leeds festivals raised more than a few eyebrows! Another very cool thing about Annie Nightingale is the fact that she was a friend of The Beatles, and she was pretty close with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I have included an episode of I Am the Eggpod (a podcast run by Chris Shaw that celebrates Beatles and solo Beatles albums) - where Nightingale talks about Lennon and Ono (and the 1980 album, Double Fantasy) but, in this recent interview, more love is aimed in the direction of a broadcasting legend:
“It’s now 50 years since Nightingale became Radio 1’s first female broadcaster (it took the station another 12 years to hire a second woman). At 80, she is Radio 1’s longest-serving presenter, and also its most cherished (cementing her national treasure status, she was recently a guest on Desert Island Discs). And though she never sought fame, it arrived anyway. With her backcombed hair and oversized shades, Nightingale is a rock star of radio who has tutored the nation in her exquisitely forward-looking music tastes. Unlike many of her early peers, she never catered to her age group or background. It’s testament to her ability to move with the times that most of her listeners are now roughly 60 years her junior.
Nightingale – who this year was awarded a CBE for services to broadcasting – has never lost her love of unearthing new sounds. Despite starting out as a music reviewer, she was always more enthusiast than critic and long ago disregarded the old Lester Bangs edict that writers shouldn’t be friends with musicians. She was famously close to The Beatles, who were wary of the media and yet welcomed her into their inner sanctum at Apple Studios. She knew about John Lennon’s relationship with Yoko Ono long before they went public, but kept shtum”.
This all brings me, semi-neatly, to a book that everybody should own! Hey Hi Hello: Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain's First Female DJ is an indispensable volume written by a real icon. I have been quoting a lot from other sources, but I feel it is important to learn about Nightingale and hear from her. If you want a true and deep representation of Nightingale, then I suggest you buy the book. This is how Waterstones have described it:
“Hey Hi Hello is a greeting we have all become familiar with, as Annie Nightingale cues up another show on Radio One. Always in tune with the nation's taste, yet effortlessly one step ahead for more than five decades, in this book Annie digs deep into her crate of memories, experiences and encounters to deliver an account of a life lived on the frontiers of pop cultural innovation.
IMAGE CREDIT: White Rabbit
As a dj and broadcaster on radio, tv and the live music scene, Annie has been an invigorating and necessarily disruptive force, working within the establishment but never playing by the rules. She walked in the door at Radio One as a rebel, its first female broadcaster, in 1970. Fifty years later she became the station's first CBE in the New Year's Honours List; still a vital force in British music, a dj and tastemaker who commands the respect of artists, listeners and peers across the world.
Hey Hi Hello tells the story of those early, intimidating days at Radio One, the Ground Zero moment of punk and the epiphanies that arrived in the late 80s with the arrival of acid house and the Second Summer of Love. It includes faithfully reproduced and never before seen encounters with Bob Marley, Marc Bolan, The Beatles and bang-up-to-date interviews with Little Simz and Billie Eilish.
Funny, warm and candid to a fault, Annie Nightingale's memoir is driven by the righteous energy of discovery and passion for music. It is a portrait of an artist without whom the past fifty years of British culture would have looked very different indeed”.
Lots of love to the boundless Annie Nightingale, whose energy and love of music continues untarnished and slowed. I hope that we get to hear her on the airwaves for many years to come, as she remains one of the most important voices around! I can only imagine how hard it was in the late-1960s and early-1970s entering radio and being surrounded by men. Perhaps not all of her colleagues were sexist, but there would have been challenges and, as she has said herself, the earliest shows were not always smooth – the wrong song being played or there being these gaps of silence! It is testament to her talent, popularity, hunger and passion that she helped change radio and, in 2020, I think her example and story should be turned into a film – maybe that is a step too far, but who wouldn’t want to see an Annie Nightingale biopic?! I think it would be really arresting and inspiring. I will leave things there, but I want to send congratulations to Nightingale on hitting that milestone. Nightingale’s fiftieth anniversary at BBC Radio 1 will be marked by two documentaries on BBC T.V., and a series of events on BBC Radio 1. It is a very fitting and deserved tribute to…
IN THIS PHOTO: Annie Nightingale on BBC Radio 1 in 1970/PHOTO CREDIT: Evening Standard/Getty Images
A real colossus of radio and broadcasting!