Sarah Kennedy
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- For other persons named Sarah Kennedy, see Sarah Kennedy (disambiguation).
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| Born: | July 8, 1950 East Grinstead, England |
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| Occupation: | Radio Broadcaster |
| Spouse: | Adrian |
| Children: | None |
Sarah Mary Kennedy MBE is a British TV and Radio broadcaster, born July 8, 1950 in East Grinstead, England. She has presented her own daily early morning radio show, The Dawn Patrol, on BBC Radio 2 since 1992.
Kennedy was honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2005, when she was awarded the MBE for services to broadcasting.[1]
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[edit] Career history
[edit] Radio
Kennedy began her career with the British Forces Broadcasting Service in Singapore, before moving to BBC Radio 2 in 1976,[2] where she presented Family Favourites and did the final closedown before the station moved to 24-hour broadcasting in January 1979.
[edit] Television
Kennedy first came to prominence in TV as one of the hosts of the ITV light entertainment show Game for a Laugh from 1981 to 1984. She was also one of the team involved with the short-lived BBC current affairs programme 60 Minutes, which ran from 1983 to 1984, and was the main presenter of the ITV game show Busman's Holiday for several series in the 1980s. In 1991, she co-hosted the animal documentary series Animal Country with the zoologist Desmond Morris.
[edit] Recent career
In 1992, Kennedy returned to Radio 2, where she has since presented the weekday early morning show. It was originally broadcast from 5am to 7am each day, but moved to its current time-slot of 6am to 7.30am in the mid-1990s. In 1995, Kennedy received a prestigious Sony Gold Radio Award. She has a regular audience of almost five million listeners on Radio 2,[citation needed] which was named as the UK's most popular station in the most recent (Quarter 3 2006) statistics published by Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR).[3]
[edit] As an author
Kennedy has also published a novel, Charlotte's Friends, as well as two collections of listeners tales, called Terrible Twos (two editions) and Terrible Pets.
[edit] Broadcasting style
Kennedy's style of presentation is occasionally idiosyncratic. Talking over the start or end of records, anecdotes that seemingly have no point or punchline, an obsession with cats, the constant use of pre-recorded sound effects, and the use of the suffix "-ingtons" at the end of names or other words give the show its atmosphere. She has a loyal fanbase, among whom she is known as Bunty Bagshaw (an allusion to the Joyce Grenfell or Arthur Marshall type of 'jolly-hockey-sticks' girls' boarding school character).
She has often championed more peculiar records, including:
- Christmas perennial "The Dawn Patrol Choirboy", a rendition of an obscure Christmas carol by an out-of-tune treble.
- "Big Panty Woman" by The Barefoot Man, a calypso skit about the larger, non-surgically enhanced lady, and its follow-up, "Fake Boobies".
- "Mein Kleiner Grüner Kaktus" by German wind band Palast Orchester.
- "Don't Stick Stickers on My Paper Knickers", a comedy record made by girl group X Certificate. [1]
For a while her 'Love/Hate' feature forced similar 'hits', including Dame Barbara Cartland's version of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", upon the early-morning listenership.
The latter slot was replaced by 'Showtime', for which listeners write in with a request to play a song from a famous musical, introduced by Guy Henry.
Her reworking of English words is a distinctive element of the show. She changes names as follows: "The Eaglingtons" (Eagles), "The Kinkingtons" (The Kinks), "Sainsbugs" (Sainsbury's), "Supermercado" (supermarkets as in Spain), "Bleatingtons" (Bleat) and so on.
[edit] Personal life
Kennedy has a partner, Adrian, whom she refers to as her "Much Beloved". He has become a popular character in the show thanks largely to his inept gambling problem.
She recently caused controversy by discussing the sale of her property in Warwickshire. She accused its buyers of refusing to pay her £300 for the contents of the attached home fuel tank. This is characteristic of her style of personal anecdotes, where she highlights what she sees as the decline in manners and standards in society.
[edit] Trivia
- Kennedy is said to have been the first person to use the term 'white van man' in 1997[4], and was made the honorary president of the first Ford Transit Owners Club in 2005 to "mark her contribution to the van industry".[2]
- She is affectionately known as "TBW" (That Bloody Woman) by TOGs (aka Terry (Wogan's) Old Geezers).
- She frequently reads out the expression "SWs to you" from listeners who write in. "SWs" is shorthand for "Love the show" (as in the oft-quoted phrase by Steve Wright on his Sunday Love Songs programme, hence the use of his initials).
[edit] References
- ^ BBC News: BBC's Frank Gardner collects OBE
- ^ BBC Radio 2: Sarah Kennedy biography
- ^ RAJAR research (PDF file)
- ^ BBC News: E-CYCLOPEDIA White Van Man: Cut up about it
