Janice Berry (née Chegwin; 5 April 1955 – 25 December 2021), was a British broadcaster best known for her work on the BBC under her first married name Janice Long.
She was the first female disc jockey to present a daily music show on “the nation’s favourite”, Radio 1, and was the first female regular presenter on Top Of The Pops, starting in 1982. The same year her senior Beeb colleague, the more late night, more alternative, more measured Annie Nightingale quit The Old Grey Whistle Test on t’other side. The times they were a changin’ indeed.
With equal aplomb, I was rather partial to tuning into both femmes (thanks to a well-thumbed Swap Shop annual my parents had bought for us we’d even seen Janice cosying up to her equally cheery brother Cheggers before she’d even uttered a word on the airwaves), my mother – like the prime minister of the day Margaret Thatcher, never much of a feminist at the best of times – decided to relay her opinion of the effervescent Liverpudlian after hearing an appreciation from DJ to colleague after a news report.
“Cheers! Thanks!” exclaimed Long in her typically bubbly husky Scouse accent.
“I don’t like her voice,” offered Mum, matter of factly.
Well… it’s true Janice Long sounded like she smoked three packs a day, at the very least. Perhaps she did, and it’s certainly the case she sounded huskier than ever when I rediscovered her in January 2020 as she was interviewing the Pet Shop Boys about their impending album Hotspot. Thanks to the wonders of the t’internet I was in Port Vila, the capital of a South Pacific archipelago called Vanuatu, while she was over 16,000 km away in a tiny studio for regional BBC Radio Wales.
Just before he quit Smash Hits for that enduring PSB gig, Neil Tennant interviewed Janice Long, marking the second time he quizzed a presenter for Aunty Beeb after grudgingly being sent to question the slightly more controversial Jonathan King in the spring of 1983.
What follows is the exchange as per the magazine’s second issue of 1985 (the one with Tears For Fears on the cover), with a Bonus Beats of the letter Neil sent to Janice, thanking the “honorary Pet Shop Girl“ for spinning the original 1984 version of West End Girls, which was discovered in an Altrincham record shop in 2023.
DJ’s the (wo)man we love the most…
Janice Long: The Janice Long Story
Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, 17 January 1985
How do you get a job as a Radio 1 DJ? Simple – you go to a “really posh” school, then become an insurance clerk, then a hostess for Laker Airways, then work in a Dutch Wimpy Bar, then sell advertising space for the Liverpool Echo… and you’re in. Well, that’s the way it turned out in… The Janice Long Story
FIRST THINGS FIRST. Are you really going out with Peter Powell? Janice Long gives a slightly weary sigh.
“Yes. Yes.”
Some nasty, suspicious minds might have thought that the whole Powell-Long romance was all set up by the BBC for a bit of publicity. This is not the case.
“We’ve been going out for five months now. We’d been going out for quite some time before… being terribly naive, we didn‘t think anyone would be interested anyway! Couldn’t believe it. We’d not changed our lives in any way. We were carrying on going down to the pub with our mates and one night we were caught – like two 16-year-olds in the bike shed – kissing and canoodling and obviously more than pals and somebody was taking photographs.
“The next thing all the papers were phoning up Radio 1, saying ‘Is it true?’ and we went, yes, and it appeared in the papers for ages and ages. We decided there was nothing we could do about it and we’d talk about it. Then the novelty would wear off and people would leave us in peace and allow us to have a good time. ‘Cause we do. We get on really well. It’s a cracking relationship.”
She smiles happily and I feel a bit guilty for ever doubting it.
Janice Long, you see, is a real person rather than a media personality. Off the air she’s just as talkative, cheerful and enthusiastic about bands and the “issues” that concern her listeners as she is on her evening radio show. She’s also quite philosophical about any intrusions into her private life.
“If you’re doing this job, you’ve got to accept everything that goes with it.”
Janice was born in Liverpool in 1955 – “which makes me 30 this year” -and lived on “a sort of council estate” in Bootle until she was 18. She went to a “really posh” school because she won a scholarship to it and, once there, hated it.
“I absolutely loathed it. I realised they weren’t actually interested in you as a person. It was a case of making sure your skirt was two fingers above your knee.”
After she’d decided she didn’t want to go on to further education, she went to work in an insurance office. Finding that a bit boring, she applied for a couple of jobs. One was as a junior reporter on Radio Merseyside, the other was as an air hostess on Laker Airways. Radio Merseyside told her she was “too young and naive”; Laker Airways hired her and for the next 2 1/2 years she sliced lemons in the sky (or whatever air hostesses do). Packing that in, she decided to hitch to Greece.
“I left with 30 quid and a rucksack which had a spare pair of drawers, a spare t-shirt, a bikini, a cagoule – somebody said ‘You must have a cagoule’ – and cleared off.”
She ended up living on a campsite in Amsterdam for a year, working in a Wimpy Bar and having a whale of a time.
“It was the first time in my life I‘d ever had to do anything for myself. I loved it.”
Then she picked grapes in Germany for a while, wandered down to Spain and returned to Liverpool. Stuck on the dole, and then working as an advertising space-seller for the Liverpool Echo, the future seemed a bit bleak.
“Out of the blue, I got a letter from Radio Merseyside, over four years after my initial interview, saying come in for a chat.”
The chat resulted in her being taken on as a station assistant “on the technical side” in the middle of 1979.
After a while, she suggested that the radio station should try and attract more young listeners and that maybe a programme featuring lots of local music would be a step in the right direction. The station agreed with her and told her to have a go at it. She started presenting a show called Streetlife every Sunday evening.
At this time the Liverpool music scene was thriving and Janice was pleased to become part of it.
“I used to like going to Eric’s on a Thursday night when they’d have anybody who’d get up and do anything. It was a really great, sweaty atmosphere. You’d paddle into the ladies and Pete Burns would be in there, fixing his make-up.”
She saw Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s first gig at Pickwick’s in Liverpool.
“They were supporting Hambi And The Dance but there were problems with the sound so Hambi went on first and Frankie went on afterwards, which was best because they were by far the better band that night. I went up to Holly and asked him if they’d like to come in and do a session and he thought I was loony,” she giggles.
However, the next day he wandered into Radio Merseyside and a session was fixed up.
“They did Two Tribes, Relax and Wish You Were Here. Then, the second time I interviewed them, they started stripping off on the air! They were sitting in either their undies or nothing and I refused to be budged. Just at the end, I said, “I think I should tell you they’ve all taken off all their clothes.”
Soon she was given an afternoon slot as well and one day interviewed Paul Gambaccini about one of his books. He returned to London and told Derek Chinnery, the controller of Radio 1, all about her. Unbeknown to Janice, Chinnery started listening to tapes of her shows, rang her up one afternoon and said: “I want a direct answer to this question, yes or no. Would you like to work for Radio 1?”
“I said: ‘Urn, yes, okay.’ And he said: ‘Well you start in two weeks time’ and that was it.” At first she did the Saturday evening show from Manchester but in late 1983 made the big move to London.
“I didn’t know anybody. Simon Bates and Steve Wright, I’d never said hello to them. But I did still begin to feel a part of the team.”
There’s not many women on Radio 1, are there? Is it a really, really sexist, male-dominated place with a few token women – i.e. Janice and Anne Nightingale, chucked in for good measure? Janice thinks not.
“It is a male domain because people have thought it is and so haven‘t actually done anything about it. I think there will be a change and more and more girls will get involved – I mean, as they have done on the television. Now you can join the BBC, get married and have a baby and come back to it – you don’t have to stay at home. It was also a myth that only blokes were interested in music.”
On her shows Janice always sounds extremely enthusiastic, peppering her chat with lots of “brilliant”s and “great”s. Is this enthusiasm real?
“Yes, I can’t hide it. If I don’t like something, I’ll say so. And the music I play, we are into. I mean, Mike (Hawkes, her producer) and I sift through it and decided what we like and don’t like. But you also know what your audience likes. There would be no point in me playing… Black Lace.”
This year Janice Long will be 30. Does she feel she’s getting too old for the job?
“I don’t believe in age. It’s like racism or sexism. I think if you’re still in touch with what’s going on, fair enough. It doesn’t matter how old you are. But having said that, I don’t think I’ll be sitting here at 65* playing the new one by The Tosspots or whatever.”
One last thing. Has being Keith Chegwin’s sister helped or influenced her at all?
“No. What he was doing didn’t influence me ’cause it’s quite far removed from what I used to do. He didn’t know that I had a job here until it was announced in the papers because I wouldn’t tell him. I thought the less he knows, the better, because there’ll always be accusations of nepotism but I know they’re not true.”
Fair enough.
© Neil Tennant, 1985
Introduction by Steve Pafford, 2025
BONUS BEATS: * She was still spinning until 66, actually, Here’s that perfectly preserved letter, discovered inside an original 12″ of West End Girls in Altrincham record shop Dead Cloud, and which reads:
Dear Janice,
Further to your query on your show on Thursday: the Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is indeed the same Smash Hits music jornalist [sic] who used to review the music press on your Platform 9 show – i.e. me.
I met the disco producer Bobby “O” in New York last summer when I was over there doing a feature on The Police. I played Bobby a cassette of the songs myself and Chris Lowe had written and he immediately suggested we recorded with him. We’ve now recorded half an album and are due to go back to New York quite soon to finish it.
Anyway, hope you like the 12” I’ve enclosed and thanks for playing West End Girls on Thursday. As far as I’m concerned, you’re now an honorary Pet Shop Girl!
Best wishes,
Neil Tennant
