Sunday, there are a few records in the charts you want to hear, but everyone’s waiting for 7 o’clock. It’s the Annie Nightingale request show. I never wrote in, but always loved the humour and stories shared between the listeners and Annie. (Did the songless Rebeccas ever get a tune? Whither green ink? How do you spell “The Murks/Mercs/?”? Where are all the Durannies now?) I’ve got loads of tapes of songs I recorded from the show, but when I saw Annie tweet that “most of the request shows were wiped. I have no copies.”, I thought “oh, complete shows? I’ve got one!”. On digging out my cassettes, it turned out I had four complete shows.

Great! Now to dig out a walkman. Oh, it doesn’t work anymore. No problem, I’ve got a spare one. Oh, that doesn’t work either. So a couple of days later, it was off to Argos to splash out on a brand new £17 walkman. Cheap as bananas, but… it works.

Now to plug everything into my Mac, and capture with Audacity. Seems like a couple of the shows were recorded at a touch too high level, so there’s a bit of blast at the top, but it’s listenable.

What a trip down memory lane to listen to these! Turns out that I always think of the words “MOno SOdi-um GLU-ta-mate” in that particular cadence because of Toyah’s “Creepy Room”. I’d totally forgotten that track. Who remembered the “neckless men in blazers and cravats”? Or Mr Murray’s daftness? Wow.

Well, Annie, thanks so much for all the great tunes, the memories, and I’m delighted to be able to respond to your official BBC request (well, that’s how I’m taking it) by giving you something back. So for The Kamikaze Pilots, Magazine, for Christina’s Is That All There Is?, for The Ramones, The Blue Nile, for Here And Now and It’s A Fine Day, for The Passions, for Fish Heads and This Mortal Coil, for Wood Beez, Split Enz, for Siouxsie, Janis and the Cocteaus, Germans, Prince Buster and The Icicle Works, and all the rest, Merry Xmas, Annie, you legend.
With love, from The Void. x

Captured to AIFF, compressed to 256kbps .m4a AAC files.
Control-click and download, folks. Please don’t stream them on (Apple) devices that won’t save files (save my bandwidth!):
Annie Nightingale 1984 Halloween Special Pt1 94Mb
Annie Nightingale 1984 Halloween Special Pt2 93MB
Annie Nightingale 1984 Halloween Special Pt3 50MB
Annie Nightingale 2nd Anniversary Show Pt1 88MB
Annie Nightingale 2nd Anniversary Show Pt2 91MB
Annie Nightingale 2nd Anniversary Show Pt3 61MB
Annie Nightingale 1984 Special Pt1 61MB
Annie Nightingale 1984 Special Pt2 88MB
Annie Nightingale 1984 Special Pt3 91MB
Annie Nightingale 1985 Special Pt1 61MB
Annie Nightingale 1985 Special Pt2 93MB
Annie Nightingale 1985 Special Pt3 41MB
Annie Nightingale 1985 Special Pt4 45MB