"What the hell is it about radio that it has to be male?"

Sad news again. Another little piece of my childhood has gone, with the departure of the lovely Annie Nightingale for the rave tent in Fabulon.

Famously, she became the first female DJ to appear on BBC Radio 1 (in 1970) - and she was still there more than 50 years later (her most recent show went out in December)!

Her Sunday Afternoon Request Show (that was on straight after the Top 40 in the 70s/80s) was essential listening when I was young, and it was after she took over hosting duties on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC 2 television (and the show's music changed to more contemporary stuff) that I first discovered two of my lifelong passions, Blondie [see here] and Gary Numan/Tubeway Army!

With her eternal love for new and diverse styles of music - everything from X-Ray Spex to the Chemical Brothers to Skrillex - even at her venerable age she was always ahead of the game. Every generation of Radio 1 listener (and every lover of music) owes her a great debt of gratitude...

RIP, Anne Avril Nightingale (1st April 1940 - 11th January 2024)

A Nightingale sang...

BBC Radio 1 has announced that Annie Nightingale's Request Show is being revived for one night only to mark the station's 40th anniversary. The two-hour show will be broadcast on 30 September 2007.

Annie Nightingale (unbelievably, she is 67 years old!) was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1, and since the death of John Peel in October 2004 has been its longest-serving presenter. Her career at the station is more than twenty years longer than that of the second longest-serving presenter, DJ Pete Tong.

I used to love her Request Show! Coming as it did straight after the Top 40 - a show that in its heyday in the late Seventies and early 80s was an absolute essential in any youngster's listening week - Annie brought to the airwaves a selection of those bands that never made the high points of the charts at that time, but were somehow cooler and less esoteric than those that John Peel played.

Pioneering such artists as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Joy Division, and anything from punk to acid house, she has now carved a late-night niche with her breakbeat and chillout shows for the post-clubbers who tune in at 4am to hear her.

How fantastic to have little part of my adolescence back, albeit briefly. (And we won't even mention The Old Grey Whistle Test!)

Read the article on Gigwise