DJ Annie Nightingale has been sharing her musical tastes with listeners for more than 45 years. Ahead of a visit to the Radio Times Festival Charles Raspin hears what keeps her tuned in
As a frequent listener of late-night radio, the low, raspy voice coming down the phone is a familiar one. Annie Nightingale has been DJing on Radio 1 for longer than I’ve been alive, pouring seemingly boundless energy into a broadcasting career that’s seen her hang out with the Beatles, rave through the acid house 90s, and dig into the grime of modern British music.
It’s a career she’ll be giving audiences a glimpse of at the first ever Radio Times Festival (Sept 24 – 27 at Hampton Court), in a question-and-answer session where she’ll trade notes with fellow Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman.
“I’ve written stuff for the Radio Times, and they’ve always been good to me – but the real reason I’m coming along is Hampton Court. My whole childhood was there, and I don’t get many chances to come back, so this is a great excuse. Especially now that summer’s over and all the music festivals are finished.”
Annie happily reminisces about her childhood – rowing on the Thames, meeting friends at the Bentall Centre, school days at Lady Eleanor Holles – and I find myself nodding along as though listening to her show, enjoying her nostalgia.
“A lot of it was boring suburbia, but I was near London, so there was lots of music around. So much British music grew up in the same places I did. Rod Stewart, the Faces, Bowie… what brought them all there? Just good communication links? Record shops and coffee bars?
“Of course, I don’t know what’s still there any more. I’ll probably be walking around, saying ‘that’s where I used to go swimming, that’s where I had a carol service, but I’m sure the Kingston I knew isn’t there anymore, and it’d be stupid to expect it to be. You can’t stop change, after all.”
I assure her that the Fighting Cocks pub, at least, is still around, but she’s not exactly melancholy. Annie is a disciple of the cutting edge, determined to stay at the musical forefront of every decade. She digs through new music like a child turning over rocks to find the most interesting bugs, proudly showing them off with each show.
“I insist on new music,” she says. “That confuses people. For most, pop-music is the music of their youth and it always will be.
“Mick Jagger said this to me once, and he was a very shrewd guy; pop music matters to young people. Teenagers, in their romance years. It’s when you grow up, when you start worrying about a job, a flat, a relationship, music just becomes background noise.”
True for most, perhaps, but not for Annie. Music has always mattered to her. The other week, she tells me, she was signing copies of her compilation album – the latest in the Ministry of Sound’s Masterpiece series – when the store began playing one of its 40-odd tracks.
“It suddenly hit me how much I loved that song, and I was in tears! Hearing it on those big speakers brought back all the emotional impact. I just had to hope nobody noticed.
“I don’t usually listen to old music. There’s no time – I want to know what’s going on now, and there’s never enough time to catch up. I listen to music morning, evening and night – panicking, because I don’t want to miss anything good. It’s terrible for my health.”
Despite her protests, Annie certainly carries her 75 years well. I spent some time hunting for up-to-date photos before realizing that she simply looks fantastic for her age. What’s her secret?
“Well, maybe I have a youthful attitude to life! I’m annoyingly positive. You’ve got to look at every problem as an opportunity, and seize it. You’ve got to find the weird DJs and go to the odd clubs, or you’ll never find anything new.
“It helps that I work with a lot of bright, young people. I’m not trying to be ‘down with the kids’ – I’m privileged to work with them, and sometimes I can offer the benefits of experience. I never say ‘it was so much better back in the day’. That’s so annoying. Even if it was, you can’t go back.
“Young people are having a bit of a hard time at the moment. We should be doing everything we can to support and encourage them. You have to be a genius nowadays to make something sound original. Every note’s been played before, and it’s all at our fingertips on the internet, but they manage it somehow! They keep producing new sounds.”
Though she doesn’t have an MP3 player -– “it would take too much time to hook up. I could be listening to music myself” – Annie’s not shy of advancing musical technology.
“I’m the sort of person who wants to have wi-fi access on holiday. I absolutely have to be connected. I obviously didn’t have a mobile phone when I was out clubbing as a teenager, but looking back I don’t know how I coped!
“Nowadays you’ve got people making music together, and they’ve never even met. They might be working from different continents. People were so snobby about synthesizing real instruments, but when I first heard German electronic I thought it was the sound of the future. Now that same technology is being used everywhere. Perhaps that’s weird, but you can’t uninvent. You can’t go backwards. Why would you want to?”
Wise words from Britain’s first female DJ, a woman who almost literally broke into radio back in 1970.
“Oh, there was all sorts of nonsense. They said I wouldn’t have authority because I was a woman, or that my voice wouldn’t carry properly. One executive told me that DJs were supposed to be ‘husband substitutes’. Well, I’d survived Fleet Street as a journalist, so I knew how to stand up for myself, and I wrote in magazines, so I had a voice.”
Facing a growing wave of criticism for their lack of female talent, the BBC turned to the woman who’d been lambasting them in article after article – a decision that’s paid off rather spectacularly.
“The situation’s improved immensely for women in radio”, agrees the trailblazer herself. “There’s more women on Radio 1 than there’s ever been. I’m a patron of Sound Women, a group that works with women in radio.
“I met a girl a few weeks ago who does a breakfast show, co-hosted with a guy, and I asked her if she drove the desk? She said no, he does. I told her she had to change that. It’s more work, but otherwise you’re just a passenger.”
“I’m very into grime at the moment. It’s the music of black London, a uniquely British kind of rap. There’s some great talent there, and Radio 1 really tries to nurture that kind of thing. These guys have no preconceptions of what a woman in broadcasting should be. There’s no snobbery. I come in and they ask me what football team I support. I love that,” she laughs. “Of course, they’re North London boys, so they’re all into Arsenal and Tottenham.”
Does she ever see a bit of herself in those young performers?
“I didn’t get on the radio to be famous. I only wanted it as a medium to get the music out there. It’s like calling someone up on the phone and playing the record for them, to say ‘hey, I just heard this – what do you think?’.
“I always play the music I want to hear – what would be the point of doing otherwise?”
On Air with Annie Nightingale is at the Radio Times Festival, Sept 25, 7.30pm
