BBC Radio One’s longest-serving DJ has opened up on her early career in the regional press in an appearance pnDesert Island Discs.

Annie Nightingale has looked back on her time with Brighton daily The Argus while appearing on the Radio Four programme.

Annie, pictured, turned 80 earlier this year and was the first woman to DJ on Radio 1.

But at 19 she was the only woman writing for The Argus and had a column reviewing records called Spin With Me in the early 1960s.

She told Desert Island Discs host Lauren Laverne: “I was a general reporter and I’d done everything.

“They’d said they wouldn’t have me because I hadn’t got the right background, but it was just as well they gave me an opportunity because it was the most wonderful training you could have.

“You didn’t think it at the time, covering things like parish council meetings or court reporting but I was learning so much.

“To make something out of one paragraph is much more difficult – the big stories write themselves.

“I still didn’t know what was coming. You have to believe in yourself and try and follow your dreams.”