Annie Nightingale

Annie Avril Nightingale (born 1 April 1940) is an English radio and television broadcaster. She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1970, and has remained a broadcaster there ever since. Nightingale has specialised in championing new and underground music, she has also led the movement and encouraged other women to become DJs and broadcasters. She is BBC Radio 1's longest serving broadcaster and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a female radio presenter. Early life and career Nightingale was born in Osterley, Middlesex, England on 1 April 1940, the daughter of Celia and Basil Nightingale. After attending St Catherine's School, Twickenham, Lady Eleanor Holles School, Hampton, Middlesex (by scholarship), 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. During the early to mid-1960s, Nightingale explored opportunities working 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). Nightingale joined the weekly Brighton and Hove Gazette as a general reporter. A year later, she was promoted to the Brighton Evening Argus, as a general reporter, feature writer, and diarist. The latter involved interviews with Sean Connery in his first James Bond role and Peter Sellers on location. She became the newspaper's first pop music columnist.