Annie Nightingale Biog
Background: Annie Nightingale is best known as Britain’s first female DJ on Radio 1. She is now the station’s longest serving broadcaster. She remains the only female DJ in the world to have been honoured with an MBE by The Queen.
Her career has been a fantastical musical journey beginning with hanging out with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, becoming a journalist and TV presenter, and being a co-owner of a chain of fashion boutiques. Having cracked the all male preserve of djs at Radio 1, she began a long career in broadcasting, always choosing her own music, and championing dozens of artists who later became world wide successes.
Then a second career in television began when she took over as solo presenter of BBC TV’s legendary series The Old Grey Whistle Test, recently voted top music programme in The 100 Best TV Shows of all time.
Annie brought her irreverent humour to the show at exactly the time of the punk revolution. She has always played and enthused about underground and new music, and through her championing of breakbeat, she is now known as Queen Of Breaks. She djs at clubs and festivals all over the world, with concomitant scrapes and adventures. She has been bugged in Russia, drugged in Iraq and mugged in Cuba, the last with nearly fatal consequences.
Annie has written two autobiograpical books:, 'Chase the Fade', and more recently 'Wicked Speed', of which the foreword was written by Trainspotting’s Irvine Welsh. She is known an an energetic party animal and claims to be most proud of winning Muzik Magazine’s 'Caner Of The Year', among other Awards which include being the first female DJ to be inducted in the Radio Academy Hall Of Fame.
She has travelled to some of the world’s hotspots including Russia, China, India and Chile, making radio programmes and documentary films, and djs in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Barcelona, and has also appeared in Serbia and Poland as well as continuing to tour extensively around the UK. She has been on the road with some of the world’s most notorious rock bands such as Primal Scream, The Who and The Rolling Stones, was once ship’s DJ on the QE2, and motor raced at Silverstone and Brand’s Hatch as part of a Radio 1 racing team. She has broadcast from Ibiza,, Miami, Berlin, Bucharest, Prague, been a runway model at a Paris fashion show, and once appeared in a soft porn movie: “I kept my clothes on, though” she commented.
Her two compilation albums, Annie On One, and Y4K: Annie Nightingale Presents have both received critical acclaim.
She is currently working with BBC TV to make a series about her unique life though music, and all its inherent shenanigans. Its been quite a trip!
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