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Annie Nightingale RIP

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Obituary

A pioneer woman DJ, a Sunday evening companion to my school homework and one of the people who has just always been *there*. She was 83 and has just died at home following a short illness. What a sad way to head into the weekend.

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  5. RIP. Was she still on Radio 1?

    I was going to start a thread on her a while back, celebrate people when they are still with us.

    I too enjoyed the Sunday afternoon show in the late seventies/early 80s, but her career is pretty unprecedented in British radio (and TV).

  6. For me it was always Annie and Janice Long that got me into my love for music. I remember her saying only a few years ago that she didn’t listen to old music anymore as there’s so much new stuff around ( didn’t agree with that one ) RIP Annie I will raise a Guinness zero to you in the pub later.

  7. The sound of Sunday evening last-minute homework.

    Echo Beach, Werewolves of London, Fishheads, The Killing of Georgie, Soft Cell’s Martin, State of Independence, and a long list of others – I heard them all first on her show.

    • Me too. I think. Early 80s for me. ‘O’ Levels.

      I used to keep a list of songs I’d heard that I’d liked in the back of a notebook. That book is long since gone, but I do remember that the list included Marrakesh Express, 29 or 6 To Four and Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees.

      Happy days (at least from this distance they were).

  8. Annie Nightingale was a pleasure to listen to. I enjoyed her repartee as much as the excellent music she played. The disco at the end of the astral plane should be good tonight.
    Thank you for the music madam

  9. You folks knew her a lot better than I did as I was not a radio listener – I only knew her from her relatively short time presenting The OGWT. I remember her with great fondness – RIP.

  10. Total ledge. Fancied her like mad when I first saw her on the idiot box. Fancied her even more when I realised she was that precious thing, a broadcasting music enthusiast with deep knowledge, great ears and an open mind.
    Condolences to all who loved her.

  11. I remember her Sunday Show as a child from car radio with my parents, and as an adult heard her drop stuff as varied as The Orb, Swell Maps, and Steve Miller’s “Macho City” on her request show. A broadcasting legend.

  13. RIP. I’m very much in the soundtrack-to-homework generation when it came to Annie. I liked her because there was always a healthy dose of relaxed humour. She would talk to, say, Paul McCartney in the same relaxed and affable way as she might with Big Fun.

    As well as “Fish Heads” she really loved this Frances Nero song:

  14. I’m sure she has been referred to as “the Female Peel” – one of those proper DJs that did actually care about the music they played.
    The fact that she was the first Female DJ on Radio 1, and pretty much a mainstay of the schedule (somewhere), but was not a public face. She never did join the japery of Top Of The Pops, preferring the cold studios of Old Grey Whistle Test.
    Mrs D (who is a good barometer of these things) said: “I know the name, but no idea what she looks like”

  15. Loved her voice. Perhaps its husky nature was due to her smoking habit. I have a clip from a John Peel session in which he offers a prize of a packet of leftover fags that Nightingale left in the BBC studio. The winner had to write in and correctly guess the number of cigs left in the pack.

  18. Apart from her impeccable taste in music and her witty repartee she was above all else a trailblazer for female dj’s to come. For a great number of yers she ws the ‘token’ female dj and the l;ikes of Janice Long, Lauren Laverne and Zoe Ball owe a big debt to her.
    She was a constant for many years of my radio 1 listening – thank you for the music Annie.

  21. Can’t say I ever actually listened to her, even when doing my homework (it was cassettes and vinly for me then, not the radio), but she sounds like a great sort.

    And there’s a nice story about her in today’s Times. I paraphrase: her favourite eatery was a restaurant opposite the legendary Olympic Studios, and she could often be found there with a jobbing muso or two after a show. In fact, she became such a frequent guest that her dining companions were often overlooked. Hence the night when she was sat with Eric Clapton, and the waiter said, “Your friend, is he in the music business too, Annie?”

    RIP.

    • She tried to walk that back afterwards saying a producer asked her to ask the question even thought they knew he was the songwriter to clarify things for their audience. I remained unconvinced

      Similarly I noted a similar mistake in Uncut’s recent 500 Best Albums of the 70s special taking about “Simon and Garfunkel’s” songwriting

      • Over Christmas I watched the S&G documentary about the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water, and got the impression that Art did play something of a (maybe small) role in helping to pull some songs together. IIRC, the title track’s third verse was suggested by him and the producer, and he seemed to have a hand in some harmonies or arrangement. Songwriting in the strict sense? Probably no. But he was more involved than I thought.

        And by God could he sing… I couldn’t sing in key if my life depended on it, but his voice just *soared*, seemingly effortlessly. I think I could live without songwriting credits if I could sing like that.

        • Think he had multiple co_-arranging credits and only 1 writing credit (and did he have any since S & G?), Simon does have a slight reputation for taking credits for other people’s work though on occasion

          • Ohhh, nice work on understatement there.

            ….says Martin Carthy, Los Lobos, those poor sods who wrote El Condor Pasa, everybody else he’s ever worked with.

            Still a solid gold fkin genius tho’.

            • Though Mr Carthy has had this to say about Scarborough Fair and I heard him speak about it in November.

              Recalling his grudge with one half of the Simon and Garfunkel duo in a recent chat with Uncut, Carthy admits that the charge of plagiarism decades ago was a mistake on his part, saying “First of all I told myself jokingly, ‘Cheeky sod, who’s he think he is, singing a traditional song…’ But I allowed myself to be sucked into that piece of nonsense [about him having stolen the arrangement].”

              “I was really taken in [by people in the industry],” says the musician. “What a fool I was, eventually allowing the music industry to get control of Scarborough Fair, and me signing the ownership of it over to them.”

              “It’s a fucking folk song, everybody owns it, and that includes Paul Simon. It’s mine, but it’s also yours.”

              With the hatchet now buried, Carthy also shares that he’s been in touch with Simon of late, adding, “He was very helpful to us during the pandemic.”

              “He contacted me. He’s a good man. He was on a tour in the late ‘90s where he was trying to repair some of the damage he felt he’d caused internationally — he said, ‘Were you mad at me?’ I said, ‘Yes, I was, once, but I got fed up with being mad at you.’”

              “Because it wasn’t true, he didn’t rip me off, the arrangement he had was a tribute, it wasn’t the same as what I played, and what a lovely compliment to pay. In those three years in the early ‘60s I don’t think I spoke more than a dozen words to him — he was full of companionable silences, he’d just sit down and enjoy the company, then, ‘Gotta go now, bye, nice to see you.’ It was nothing awkward, he was just a nice bloke.”

              Carthy continues: “I sang Scarborough Fair with him at the Hammersmith Apollo and it was bloomin’ lovely. I’d been unable to sing the song properly because there was too much baggage, but I sang it with Paul and it was truly great. I laid the ghost to rest with the help of Paul. But I was never able to sing it again after that.”

              Guitar.com

  23. AW-friendly moment: she presented the 20th-Anniversary Sgt Pepper documentary that was broadcast on a Sunday night in May or June 1987 the night before the album was first released on CD. At the age of 13 it was revelatory to me -it made clear the link with Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane and was the first time I’d heard Tomorrow Never Knows, which blew my tiny mind.

    Annie, a familiar voice from contemporary radio, was perfect for: presenting Billy Shears to the Happy Hour generation.

    I fkin loved her Sunday night show, she always radiated good taste, good humour and intelligence. A cut above to the end. Job well done Annie xxx

      • Yeah, I was trying to put my finger on it and I realised that AN just seemed to be clever without advertising it.

        She took over the same slot as Alexis Korner and had exactly the same approach to her listeners and to broadcasting: It’s Sunday night and you need a bit of comfort, especially after whatever shock the charts have thrown up. . I’m your mate. I’m like you. You’ll like this.

        Here’s Lords of the New Church doing Like A Virgin 😉

  24. She just had a perfect voice for radio.
    Husky (& therefore ineffably sexy), & always twinkling with humour, passion & boundless enthusiasm for pretty much all the music she played.
    There were doubtless numerous acts who owed their first break to her championing of them & she also reminded audiences of veterans deserving some love & respect- I have a particular memory of her bigging up Ian Hunter in the late 70s in such a manner.
    A friend I did my A Levels with – who was proper posh & had attended the same Brighton school as AN’s offspring in the 70s, delighted in telling me that the pearl clutching parents there were frequently scandalised by AN rocking up in a sports car to pick up her kids, replete with shades & leopard skin & wearing ( brace yourselves) a ‘black bra under a white shirt’ like a character from a Marianne Faithful song. She obviously didn’t give a hoot & my friend adored her for it.

  25. I couldn’t pick up her BBC show in 80s Dublin so I knew her best from Whistle Test. She gave me the impression that King Crimson (80s version) were one of her favourite bands and I had a tape-recorder-against-the-TV recording of a BBC broadcast of their concert from Frejus where her fulsome introduction and my father rolling in from the pub interrupting were notable features.

    Later when I lived in London I caught some of her early 90s shows. They were very eclectic and I can see the comparison with Peel. True enthusiasm for music seemed a rare commodity in those days.

  26. I am thoroughly enjoying that Annie Spotify playlist which I mentioned above. A wonderful combination of old favourites and fab tunes I’d never heard before-

    And I now I’ve stumbled across this. Tracks from her Sunday evening request show..

    Over 2,000 songs.

    Moose, that was a wonderful comment about her show:

    “She took over the same slot as Alexis Korner and had exactly the same approach to her listeners and to broadcasting: It’s Sunday night and you need a bit of comfort, especially after whatever shock the charts have thrown up. . I’m your mate. I’m like you. You’ll like this.”

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