Annie Nightingale

Anne Avril Nightingale (1 April 1940 – 11 January 2024) was an English radio and television broadcaster.

Anne Avril Nightingale was born in Osterley, Middlesex, England, on 1 April 1940, the daughter and only child of Celia and Basil Nightingale.

Her father ran a family wallpaper business.

She attended St Catherine's School, Twickenham beginning at age five, although her family was not Catholic.

She became a fan of blues music as a teenager.

She later attended Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, Middlesex (by scholarship), and the School of Journalism at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster).

Nightingale began her career as a journalist in Brighton, East Sussex.

She spent a short time at the Brighton and Hove Gazette as a general reporter, and then moved to become the only woman in the newsroom at The Argus in Brighton.

There, she wrote a pop music column called Spin With Me and also worked as a general reporter, court reporter, feature writer, and diarist.

The latter involved interviews with Sean Connery in his first James Bond role, and Peter Sellers on location.

She later recalled facing little overt sexism at the paper, and that she was allowed to publish feminist pieces.

During the early to mid-1960s, Nightingale worked in television, both as a reporter for BBC's Southampton- and Bristol-based news programme South Today, and light entertainment and music programmes for the ITV Network Southern TV (now ITV Meridian).

In the early 1960s, 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.

She joined Associated-Rediffusion TV and hosted her own show in the 1960s, That's For Me.

Nightingale presented the pop culture show, booked guest musicians who had not previously been seen on television such as the Yardbirds, and introduced the Who's first promotion film.

At this time, she also hosted other specials for Associated-Rediffusion, including The Glad Rag Ball at Wembley, starring the Rolling Stones, and the British Song Festival in Brighton.

She also covered the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy.

Nightingale made numerous appearances on Ready Steady Go! and was a guest on their New Year's Eve Specials, which included some of 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 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-1960s, inspired by her friend Pauline Boty, a pop art painter, she launched a chain of fashion boutiques, as a 'front' person and publicist.

This swiftly became a chain called Snob.

She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1970 and the first female presenter for BBC Television's The Old Grey Whistle Test where she stayed for four years.

Nightingale specialised in championing new and underground music, she also led the movement and encouraged other women to become DJs and broadcasters.

She was the longest serving broadcaster in BBC Radio 1's history and held the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a female radio presenter.

Nightingale was the pop music columnist and feature writer for Cosmopolitan when it launched in the UK in 1970.

Early in the 1970s, Nightingale hosted a documentary film series for BBC One entitled Before The Event.

The series was filmed all over the UK in locations such as The Lake District and Derbyshire.

The series recorded the build-up to major events in the British sporting calendar, such as the Hennessy Gold Cup steeplechase and the Formula 1 British Grand Prix motor race at Silverstone.

A little later, she appeared in her first feature film, Home Before Midnight, starring James Aubrey and Chris Jagger.

Nightingale played a talk show TV host and was billed as playing the part of herself.

Nightingale worked with BBC TV on The Old Grey Whistle Test for four years.

In 1978, she became the show's main presenter, 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.

Later and until the mid-1980s, she wrote regularly for the Sunday Mirror, and penned music columns for the Daily Sketch and the Daily Express.

Nightingale put on fashion shows and took part in them, notably a charity show for Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, at Arundel Castle, West Sussex.

She also became a well-known fashion model at the time, with sessions with photographers including Philip Townsend and Dezo Hoffmann.

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.