Hey Hi Hello: Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain’s First Female DJ

‘I loved this book. Annie Nightingale is my heroine. The woman is a legend’ Irvine Welsh

‘A joy to read’ Guardian

Hey Hi Hello is a greeting we have all become familiar with, as Annie Nightingale cues up another show on Radio One. Always in tune with the nation’s taste, yet effortlessly one step ahead for more than five decades, in this book Annie digs deep into her crate of memories, experiences and encounters to deliver an account of a life lived on the frontiers of pop cultural innovation.

As a dj and broadcaster on radio, tv and the live music scene, Annie has been an invigorating and necessarily disruptive force, working within the establishment but never playing by the rules. She walked in the door at Radio One as a rebel, its first female broadcaster, in 1970. Fifty years later she became the station’s first CBE in the New Year’s Honours List; still a vital force in British music, a dj and tastemaker who commands the respect of artists, listeners and peers across the world.

Hey Hi Hello tells the story of those early, intimidating days at Radio One, the Ground Zero moment of punk and the epiphanies that arrived in the late 80s with the arrival of acid house and the Second Summer of Love. It includes faithfully reproduced and never before seen encounters with Bob Marley, Marc Bolan, The Beatles and bang-up-to-date interviews with Little Simz and Billie Eilish.

Funny, warm and candid to a fault, Annie Nightingale’s memoir is driven by the righteous energy of discovery and passion for music. It is a portrait of an artist without whom the past fifty years of British culture would have looked very different indeed.