Sarah Kennedy facts for kids

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 a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire "for services to broadcasting".

Early life

Sarah Kennedy was born in Sussex. She attended Copthorne Prep School in the west of the county.

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 5 am to 7 am, during 1993, but moved the following year to the time-slot of 6 am to 7:30 am, 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 5 am to 7 am slot to accommodate a longer Evans show, starting on 11 January 2010.

It was announced on 3 September 2010 that she was to leave the show. Kennedy had been absent for several weeks before this and did not return to the show, as she retired from broadcasting. 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.

She is 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.

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.

Personal life

Kennedy has a partner, Adrian McGlynn.