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Sarah Kennedy
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Sarah Mary Kennedy MBE (born 8 July 1950 in East Grinstead, West Sussex) is a British TV and radio broadcaster. She has presented her own daily early morning radio show, The Dawn Patrol, on BBC Radio 2 since 1993.
Kennedy was honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2005, when she was awarded the MBE for services to broadcasting.
edy began her career with the British Forces Broadcasting Service in Singapore, before moving to BBC Radio 2 in 1976, where she presented Family Favourites and did the final closedown before the station moved to 24-hour broadcasting in January 1979.
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Sarah Mary Kennedy MBE (born 8 July 1950 in East Grinstead, West Sussex) is a British TV and radio broadcaster. She has presented her own daily early morning radio show, The Dawn Patrol, on BBC Radio 2 since 1993.
Kennedy was honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2005, when she was awarded the MBE for services to broadcasting.
Career history
Radio
Kennedy began her career with the British Forces Broadcasting Service in Singapore, before moving to BBC Radio 2 in 1976, where she presented Family Favourites and did the final closedown before the station moved to 24-hour broadcasting in January 1979. She is also president of the hospital radio station known as "Radio Horton", based in the Horton Hospital, Oxfordshire.
Television
Kennedy's first on-screen job was reading the news on Southern Television's Day by Day. She 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. She also co-hosted The Animals Roadshow and Animal Country with zoologist Desmond Morris in the late 1980s and 1991 respectively.
Recent career
In 1992, Kennedy returned to Radio 2, where she has since presented the weekday early morning show. It was originally broadcast from 5 am to 7 am each day, but moved to its current time-slot of 6 am to 7.30 am 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, which was named as the UK's most popular station in the most recent (Quarter 4 2008) statistics published by Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR).
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.
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 also regularly refers to the BBC Pips either just before or just after they are played. 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 often tells listeners about her holiday activities, as well as life in her country and London houses. She always ends the show (somewhat morbidly) with her trademark phrase "Re-group tomorrow, if spared."
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.
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), "Colleag-wees" (colleagues), "supermercado" (supermarkets as in Spain), "busticles"/"chesticles" (breasts), etc. 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 programmes, hence the use of his initials). Many listeners write in to ask what "SWs" actually means, but she rarely explains it.
Kennedy is said to have been the first person to use the term 'white van man' in 1997, and was made the honorary president of the first Ford Transit Owners Club in 2005 to mark her contribution to the van industry.
She is affectionately known as TBW (That Bloody Woman) by TOGs (aka Terry (Wogan's) Old Geezers).
Kennedy has sometimes suffered with her health, and has had to take some time off work. Her slurred speech throughout her show on 13 August, 2007 gave listeners cause for concern, but the presenter blamed a sore throat. She presented the show on 14 August 2007, but then stopped presenting the show for a while. Instead, the programme was presented by her colleagues Pete Mitchell, Alex Lester, Aled Jones and Richard Allinson. Kennedy was recovering from pneumonia. She returned to work on 10 September 2007. And worked without incident for the rest of the year.
Personal life
Sarah Kennedy was born in West Sussex. Her father was a stockbroker and her mother a nurse. She grew up in East Grinstead. She studied for two years at drama school, becoming a drama teacher. She was a Matron at Copthorne Prep School.
In her twenties she married a member of the armed forces. She has a partner, Eton-educated Adrian McGlynn, a director of horseracing's administrators, Weatherbys, whom she refers to as her Much Beloved. He has become a popular character in the show. He is sixteen years younger than Kennedy. They met at the wedding of Desmond Morris's son, where McGlynn was best man.
They reside in Bedfordshire.
External links
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