Sarah Kennedy

Sarah Mary Kennedy MBE (born 8 July 1950) is a British retired TV and radio broadcaster. She presented her daily early morning radio show, ''The Dawn Patrol'', on BBC Radio 2 from 1993 to 2010.

In the 2005 Queen's Birthday Honours, Kennedy was appointed as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire "for services to broadcasting".

Early life and career

Sarah Kennedy was born in Sussex. Raised in East Grinstead, she was the daughter of a stockbroker and a nurse. She attended Copthorne Prep School, and studied for two years at drama school, later becoming a drama teacher.

Media career

Kennedy began her career with the British Forces Broadcasting Service in Singapore in 1973, before moving to BBC Radio 2 in 1976, initially as a newsreader and continuity announcer. She was on duty for the station's final closedown before it moved to 24-hour broadcasting in January 1979. She continued to present music shows on Radio 2, including holiday cover for '' Family Favourites'' until 1983, mainly appearing on ''String Sound'', featuring the BBC Radio Orchestra. She was also president of the hospital radio station known as "Radio Horton", based in the Horton Hospital, Oxfordshire.

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'' (in the late 1980s) and ''Animal Country'' (in 1991) with zoologist Desmond Morris.

Kennedy returned to Radio 2 to present the weekday early morning show ''The Dawn Patrol'', which ran between 4 January 1993 and 13 August 2010. It was originally broadcast from 5am to 7am, during 1993, but moved the following year to the time-slot of 6am to 7:30am, where it remained until 8 January 2010. In 1995, Kennedy received a prestigious Sony Gold Radio Award. She had a regular audience of around 4.5 million listeners on Radio 2. Due to Terry Wogan's retirement from his breakfast show in December 2009, and the ambitions of his successor Chris Evans, the morning radio schedule was changed, and Kennedy's show was moved earlier to its original 5am to 7am slot to accommodate a longer Evans show, starting on 11 January 2010.

It was then announced on 3 September that year that she was to leave the show. Kennedy had been absent for several weeks beforehand and would not return to the show (as she retires from broadcasting), before Evans' show was further extended in October. The programme was presented during this time by Lynn Parsons and Aled Jones. On 17 January 2011, Vanessa Feltz took over the show's slot.

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''.

Characteristics and mannerisms

Kennedy's reworking of English words was a distinctive element of her show. She changed names such as: "The Eaglingtons" (The Eagles), "The Kinkingtons" (The Kinks), "Sainsbugs" (Sainsbury's), "Colleag-wees" (colleagues), "supermercado" (supermarkets, as in Spanish), "breasticles"/"chesticles" (breasts), "Chancellor of the Exchequingtons" (based on the Chancellor of the Exchequer), amongst others.

She frequently read out the expression "SW's to you" from listeners who wrote in. "SWs" was shorthand for "Love the show", as in the often-used phrase by Steve Wright on his programmes (hence the use of his initials). Many listeners wrote in to ask what "SWs" actually meant, but Kennedy rarely explained it. She is also said to have been the first person to use the term 'white van man', in 1997. "Bunty Bagshaw" was an eccentric alter-ego she adopted.

Career incidents and controversies

Kennedy has sometimes suffered with her health, and has had to take time off work. Her slurred speech throughout her show on 13 August 2007 gained media attention, but she blamed a sore throat. She presented the following day's show as normal, before taking a month-long break, leaving the show to be presented by colleagues Pete Mitchell, Alex Lester, Aled Jones and Richard Allinson. It was later revealed that Kennedy was recovering from pneumonia. She returned to work on 10 September 2007.

She also attracted concern after a "bizarre" performance while standing in for Terry Wogan on the breakfast show in 1999. This included calling Ken Bruce an "old fool" and referring to the presenter of the day's " Pause For Thought" slot as "a stupid old prune". She blamed the incident on a lack of sleep the previous night and apologised to listeners the following day. She had been due to stand in for Wogan the following week, but took time off instead, and Bruce took her place.

In October 2007, she was reprimanded after joking (in a segment about the importance of wearing visible clothing in winter road conditions) that she had almost run over a black pedestrian because she "couldn't see him in the dark". The BBC later apologised for the comment. She had previously opined that "black men dominate athletics because they are accustomed to being pursued by lions".

She was also "spoken to" by BBC bosses after she praised the late Conservative politician Enoch Powell during a show in July 2009, describing Powell as "the best Prime Minister this country never had".

In May 2014, Kennedy was banned from driving for 22 months for drunk driving, having crashed into a stationary car. In a report, it was stated that Kennedy drank four glasses of wine over several hours to alleviate back pain, and did not realise she was over the legal limit.

Personal life

In her twenties, Kennedy married a member of the armed forces and had two children; the couple later divorced. She has a partner, Adrian McGlynn, a director of Weatherbys, whom she referred to as her "much beloved". He became a popular character in her show; they met at the wedding of Desmond Morris's son, at which McGlynn was best man. They reside in Northamptonshire, although Kennedy also has an apartment in a converted school building in London.

References

External links

*

''Sixty Minutes''

Reviews at DooYoo

Review at Ciao!

News items

''Guardian'' article September 2008 about her favouring the ''Daily Telegraph''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, Sarah
1950 births
Living people
British radio DJs
British radio personalities
British women radio presenters
BBC Radio 2 presenters
Members of the Order of the British Empire
People from East Grinstead
Race-related controversies in radio
BBC controversies
Radio controversies