Set Faders To Stun

Annie Nightingale was the more approachable version of John Peel. Like her broadcasting pal, she played left-field tunes during the punk wars, breaking the Smashy embargo on anything that wasn't Abba or the Barron Knights. But while Peel favoured the discordant, the home-made and the defiantly weird, Annie filtered some of that stuff out.

I seem to remember her on Radio 1 on a Sunday. The tunes that stuck included 'Whole Wide World' by Wreckless Eric, 'Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll' by Ian Dury plus 'Womble Bashers Of Walthamstow' by The Grimms. The latter was a silly pastiche of terrace aggro that gave no indication that the amiable broadcaster would still be on the station at the age of 69, blasting out grime and dubstep.

If you're fast enough with the iplayer, you can still see the BBC4 documentary, 'Bird On The Wireless', which recounts Annie's full history. She was mates with The Beatles and she partied with Keith Moon. She took over as presenter on the Whistle Test when Bob Harris couldn't tolerate the punk contenders. There were less enthralling periods and the programme is strangely reticent on her friendship with The Police, but we do get an appreciation of her grit and belief.

She got a gig on Radio 1 at a time when females were shunned. Apparently the male jocks were regarded as husband substitutes, a theory which Annie expounds with proper contempt. I had a few encounters with this exceptional person during the Primal Scream years and I can vouch for the fact that she was utterly up for the music, carried by a succession of subcultures and evidently still loving it.