‘The guys were waiting for me to fail’: Annie Nightingale on battling the BBC

Still doing a Radio 1 show at 80, the veteran DJ tells Desert Island Discs about Beatles secrets and breaking down a ‘wall of no’

Veteran DJ Annie Nightingale, the first woman to do the job on Radio 1, has spoken of her suspicion that the BBC wanted her to mess up at the beginning of her career with the station in 1970.

“I think the BBC wanted it to fail,” Nightingale said. “They thought, OK, we have got this woman DJ now … but they would have been quite happy if it had not worked out.”

People get very jaded. But I still get shivers up and down my legs when I first hear something that later becomes very successful

Related: One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown – review