My friend Anne Bristow, who has died aged 67 of Covid-19, was an inspiring and innovative radio presenter and producer. She never sat at a desk if she could sit on it, poised to leap off and approach anyone with the unshakeable belief that they would agree to her plans, projects and interviews. And they did.
Annie’s major contribution came with the BBC World Service, where she devised, produced and was the launch presenter of Megamix, a wide-ranging magazine series targeted to attract a younger listenership, which ran for 10 years from November 1988.
Born in London, she was one of three children of Derek Bristow, who worked for Jaeger fashion, and his wife, Yvonne, a PA in the engineering group Smiths Industries. The family moved to Cheltenham in the mid-1960s. Annie attended Pates grammar school for girls, and gained a law degree at Oxford Brookes University. She joined BBC Radio Cambridgeshire in 1982, and was on air from day one.
There, she met her future husband Cliff Kitney. Their paths crossed again when she joined BBC World Service in the mid-1980s and they married in 1990.
Beginning in the popular music department, she then created Megamix. Colleagues found her passion and energy exhilarating, whether being sent to interview the Sex Pistol John Lydon or the author Salman Rushdie as the storm broke around The Satanic Verses. Her career progressed upwards, until a brain haemorrhage and stroke brought it to a sudden halt in 1996.
Her family was told she might never walk or talk again, but visitors recognised Annie’s defiance when they saw her applying her signature red lipstick using the knife from her hospital lunch as a mirror. She made news herself when she began talking with a Scottish accent, a post-stroke phenomenon called Foreign Language Syndrome.
She was paralysed down the right-hand side of her body, but, returning to the BBC undaunted, she offered Radio 4 a quiz series based on an unlikely subject for radio: antiques. Hidden Treasures ran from 1998 to 2002.
After that final flourish, Annie retired, and lived in Arundel, West Sussex, until her death. She spent that time with Cliff, enjoying good food, better wine, and visits to Chichester Festival Theatre. Although her disability worsened, she had no truck with people who asked how she was coping.
Cliff predeceased her by 18 months, and Annie is survived by her brother, Mark, and sister, Lucie.
