Glastonbury Festival to remember Annie Nightingale

The broadcasting pioneer died earlier this year following a brief illness

The BBC and Glastonbury Festival will celebrate the life of the late DJ Annie Nightingale at this year's event.

The pioneer became the first female BBC Radio 1 presenter when she joined the station in 1970.

Nightingale died in January, aged 83, and a special event will be held in tribute to her across two stages at Worthy Farm on 27 June.

She last performed at Glastonbury in 2017, on The Glade Main Stage, where the celebrations will start.

The stage will host the daytime part of the celebration and will feature King Of The Beats and Paper Dragon.

The celebrations will then continue on the BBC Introducing Stage with Jon Carter, Krafty Kuts and Martha, who Nightingale mentored.

The special sets will feature some of the late DJ's favourite music.

Ahead of the festival beginning in less than a month, a statement from Glastonbury said the celebration of Nightingale's life would be "fitting".

It read: "Annie Nightingale loved Glastonbury Festival.

"Her BBC Radio 1 show was broadcast from the Festival on Thursday nights through the 2000s, from Silver Hayes and The Glade.

Annie Nightingale is said to have paved the way for some of the biggest female radio DJs today

"The last time she played the festival, in 2017, was on The Glade Main Stage so it’s fitting that the Celebration of Annie’s life starts in The Glade on Thursday before moving to the BBC Introducing Stage for the after-dark part two.

"The DJs will be covering the music Annie brought to the world from the ‘90s through to the present day through her show with Jon Carter playing a set of big beat, the sound that kicked off some of the UK’s biggest dance acts’ careers."

Nightingale's first BBC broadcast was in 1963 as a panellist on Juke Box Jury and she joined Radio 1 seven years later.

She was the station's only female presenter until Janice Long joined in 1982 and she is credited with helping pave the way for the likes of Jo Whiley and Sara Cox.

Pictured here with Liam Gallagher, Nightingale secured the Guinness World Record for longest career as a female radio presenter in 2010

A new scholarship for female and non-binary dance music DJs, named after Nightingale, was launched in 2021 by BBC Radio 1.

She documented her pioneering career and the evolution of five decades of pop culture in her 2020 memoir, "Hey Hi Hello".

In 2019, she was made a CBE for services to radio having previously been made an MBE in 2002.

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