Cathy McGowan
Encyclopedia
Cathy McGowan is a British broadcaster and journalist, presenter from 1964-6 of Rediffusion television’s rock music show, Ready Steady Go!
in Britain and internationally. As one historian of television reflected in the 1970s, "the revolution had the greatest possible effect on television ... and hindsight commentators were to see the year [1963] as a line of demarcation drawn between one kind of Britain and another".
With its slogan ,"the weekend starts here", RSG was shown on Fridays from 6-7pm. Its original presenter Keith Fordyce
(1928-2011), a stalwart of the BBC
Light Programme and Radio Luxembourg
, was joined in 1964 by Cathy McGowan. McGowan, recruited as an advisor from 600 applicants, had been in the fashion department of Woman’s Own. She is said to have secured the role in a "run off" with journalist Anne Nightingale, later a disc jockey
on Radio 1
, by answering "fashion" to a question from Elkan Allan
(1922–2006), RSGs executive producer and head of entertainment at Rediffusion, as to whether sex, music or fashion were more important to teenagers.
While McGowan had answered an advert for 'a typical teenager' to work as an advisor, she found herself presenting the show. Her strength was that her status as a fan of the artists was evident in her style; stumbling over her lines, losing her cool and apparent inexperience only made her more popular, and by the end she was presenting the show alone. She may have been the inspiration for Susan Campy from The Beatles
1964 film A Hard Day's Night
, when George Harrison
tells the producer of a fictitious teen television show that Campy is "... that posh bird who gets everything wrong", to which the producer played by Kenneth Haigh
replies, "She's a trendsetter. It's her profession."
of the Animals
- and, through her fashion sense, acquired the eponym, “Queen of the Mods”. (This term has been applied to others, such as Dusty Springfield
and, in New Zealand
, Dinah Lee
.) Much of her appeal lay in the fact that she was the age of RSGs viewers : young women regarded her as a role model, while men were attracted by her looks. Anna Wintour
, future editor of American Vogue
, was, according to her biographer Jerry Oppenheimer
, among teenagers whom the show introduced to fashion. Another, Lesley Hornby, who became better known as Twiggy
, regarded McGowan as her heroine: "I'd sit and drool over her clothes. She was a heroine to us because she was one of us".
, launched in 1965 by his appearances on RSG, recalled McGowan as the "young Mary Quant
-look hostess" (Quant being the leading British proponent of the mini-skirt, which McGowan helped popularise), with whom he developed an "easy-going" style of on-screen conversation. In the words of Dominic Sandbrook
, a social historian:
By Christmas 1965 McGowan's name was coupled with rising singer Jonathan King
in a roll-call of stars on The Barron Knights' record, "Merrie Gentle Pops":
The following summer McGowan was among celebrities - "a more glittering line up of guests could hardly be imagined" - at the opening in June of Sibylla, a nightclub close to Piccadilly Circus
in London.
, whose first store opened in September 1964, and had her own fashion range at British Home Stores. She endorsed a portable make-up set known as "Cathy's Survival Kit". Barbara Hulanicki
, who founded Biba, observed that "the girls aped Cathy's long hair and eye-covering fringe and soon their little faces were growing heavy with stage make-up". Julia Dykins, half-sister of John Lennon
of the Beatles, recalled how, despite wearing black eye make-up, black polo neck
s and dyed black jeans
"à la Cathy McGowan", she was unable to convince doormen at the Cavern Club in Liverpool
, where the Beatles came to prominence, that she was over 18, the age for admission. It has been claimed that the formation in 1966 of a British Society for the Preservation of the Miniskirt was prompted by McGowan's indicating that she would wear a long skirt on RSG.
After Fordyce’s departure in March 1965, McGowan continued to present RSG until it ended on 23 December 1966. In 1965 a decision that artists should perform live gave it immediacy that its longer-running BBC
rival, Top of the Pops
(1964–2006), never acquired; indeed, the latter retained a Mancunian
model Samantha Juste
- in television, McGowan's rival - as its "disc girl" until 1967. Although RSGs momentum had begun to flag, it had become a "cult
programme" whose impact on music and, through McGowan, on the "swinging" sixties
more generally was widely acknowledged. As Sandbrook put it, "Thanks to the enthusiastic salesmanship of McGowan and her fellow presenters, the emerging youth culture that had once been confined to the capital [London] or to the great cities could now be seen and copied almost immediately from Cornwall
to the Highlands
". The musician and jazz critic George Melly
thought RSG "made pop music work on a truly national scale ... It was almost possible to feel a tremor of pubescent excitement from Land's End
to John O'Groats".
McGowan, who was a 5 foot 4½ inch (1.63m) brunette, modelled and also presented a show on Radio Luxembourg
.
However, in 1978, McGowan was the subject of a tribute - "I'm in love with Cathy McGowan" - by the English band Generation X
in the song Ready Steady Go, a single
that hit #47 on the UK charts. The social historian Alwyn W. Turner has cited the band's "hymning" of McGowan as an example of punk's indebtedness to mod culture.
when it was launched in 1973. In the late 1980s she worked for the BBC's Newsroom South East, specialising in entertainment. She interviewed celebrities, including some she had known in the 1960s and others such as singer Michael Ball
, who became her partner, and Deborah Harry
, formerly of Blondie
, whom she described as the most beautiful woman she had met. In 1991, McGowan co-hosted with Alexei Sayle
and Jonathan Ross
a show by British comedians to mark the 30th anniversary of Amnesty International
.
, who appeared in such films as The Family Way
(1966) and The Virgin Soldiers
(1969). They had a daughter, Emma. The marriage was dissolved in 1988 and, since the early 1990s, she has been the partner of Michael Ball
. Ball was godfather to McGowan's grandson, Connor, son of Emma.
McGowan's brother John McGowan was a disc jockey in 1965 on King Radio
, a pirate radio
station broadcasting from a fort in the Thames Estuary
. In the mid 1990s the death from ovarian cancer
of his wife Angela, a friend of McGowan since their teens, led to his becoming co-founder of a charity supporting research into the disease.
Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go! or simply RSG! was one of the UK's first rock/pop music TV programmes. It was conceived by Elkan Allan, head of Rediffusion TV. Allan was assisted by record producer/talent manager Vicki Wickham, who became the producer. It was broadcast from August 1963 until December 1966...
Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go! (RSG) was first broadcast in August 1963, coinciding with the rise of The BeatlesThe Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
in Britain and internationally. As one historian of television reflected in the 1970s, "the revolution had the greatest possible effect on television ... and hindsight commentators were to see the year [1963] as a line of demarcation drawn between one kind of Britain and another".
With its slogan ,"the weekend starts here", RSG was shown on Fridays from 6-7pm. Its original presenter Keith Fordyce
Keith Fordyce
Keith Fordyce was an English disc jockey and former presenter on British radio and television. He is most famous as the first presenter of ITV's Ready Steady Go! in 1963, but was a stalwart of both BBC radio and Radio Luxembourg for many years.-Career:Born Keith Fordyce Marriott in Lincoln, he...
(1928-2011), a stalwart of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Light Programme and Radio Luxembourg
Radio Luxembourg (English)
Radio Luxembourg is a commercial broadcaster in many languages from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is nowadays known in most non-English languages as RTL ....
, was joined in 1964 by Cathy McGowan. McGowan, recruited as an advisor from 600 applicants, had been in the fashion department of Woman’s Own. She is said to have secured the role in a "run off" with journalist Anne Nightingale, later a disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
on Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
, by answering "fashion" to a question from Elkan Allan
Elkan Allan
Elkan Allan was a British television producer and print journalist. Allan is best remembered for his creation of the pioneering popular cult 1960s TV rock/pop music show Ready Steady Go!...
(1922–2006), RSGs executive producer and head of entertainment at Rediffusion, as to whether sex, music or fashion were more important to teenagers.
While McGowan had answered an advert for 'a typical teenager' to work as an advisor, she found herself presenting the show. Her strength was that her status as a fan of the artists was evident in her style; stumbling over her lines, losing her cool and apparent inexperience only made her more popular, and by the end she was presenting the show alone. She may have been the inspiration for Susan Campy from The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
1964 film A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
, when George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
tells the producer of a fictitious teen television show that Campy is "... that posh bird who gets everything wrong", to which the producer played by Kenneth Haigh
Kenneth Haigh
Kenneth Haigh is a British actor. He played the central role of Jimmy Porter in the very first production of John Osborne's seminal play Look Back in Anger in 1956. His performance in a 1958 Broadway theatre production of that play so moved one young woman in the audience that she mounted the...
replies, "She's a trendsetter. It's her profession."
"Queen of the Mods"
McGowan seemed in tune with the times - "the girl of the day", according to Eric BurdonEric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
of the Animals
The Animals
The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London...
- and, through her fashion sense, acquired the eponym, “Queen of the Mods”. (This term has been applied to others, such as Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
and, in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Dinah Lee
Dinah Lee
Dinah Lee is the stage name of New Zealand-born singer, Diane Marie Jacobs , who performed 1960s pop and then adult contemporary music. Her debut single from early 1964, "Don't You Know Yockomo?", achieved No. 1 chart success in New Zealand and, across the Tasman Sea, in Brisbane and Melbourne...
.) Much of her appeal lay in the fact that she was the age of RSGs viewers : young women regarded her as a role model, while men were attracted by her looks. Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour, OBE is the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and sunglasses, Wintour has become an institution throughout the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for...
, future editor of American Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, was, according to her biographer Jerry Oppenheimer
Jerry Oppenheimer
Jerry Oppenheimer is an author who has written several unauthorized biographies of public figures including Hillary and Bill Clinton, Anna Wintour, Rock Hudson, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters, Ethel Kennedy and Jerry Seinfeld...
, among teenagers whom the show introduced to fashion. Another, Lesley Hornby, who became better known as Twiggy
Twiggy
Lesley Lawson née Hornby known as Twiggy is an English model, actress, and singer. In the early-1960s she became a prominent British teenage model of swinging sixties London with others such as Penelope Tree....
, regarded McGowan as her heroine: "I'd sit and drool over her clothes. She was a heroine to us because she was one of us".
A star among stars
A similar empathy extended to the artists that McGowan interviewed. DonovanDonovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
, launched in 1965 by his appearances on RSG, recalled McGowan as the "young Mary Quant
Mary Quant
Mary Quant OBE FCSD is a British] fashion designer and British fashion icon, who was instrumental in the mod fashion movement. She was one of the designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Born in Blackheath, London, to Welsh parents, Quant brought fun and fantasy to...
-look hostess" (Quant being the leading British proponent of the mini-skirt, which McGowan helped popularise), with whom he developed an "easy-going" style of on-screen conversation. In the words of Dominic Sandbrook
Dominic Sandbrook
Dominic Sandbrook http://dominicsandbrook.com/wordpress/about/ is a British historian. Born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, he was educated at Malvern College...
, a social historian:
The show's most celebrated presenter, McGowan was the same age as the national audience; she wore all the latest trendy shifts and mini-dresses; and she spoke with an earnest, ceaseless barrage of teenage slang, praising whatever was 'fab' or 'smashing', and damning all that was 'square' or 'out'. 'The atmosphere', one observer wrote later, 'was that of a King's RoadKings RoadKing's Road or Kings Road, known popularly as The King's Road or The KR, is a major, well-known street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both in west London, England...
party where the performers themselves had only just chanced to drop by'.
By Christmas 1965 McGowan's name was coupled with rising singer Jonathan King
Jonathan King
Jonathan King is an English singer, songwriter, impresario and record producer. He is also the author of three novels, Bible Two and The Booker Prize Winner , and Beware the Monkey Man , and an autobiography, 65 My Life So Far .King first came to prominence as an...
in a roll-call of stars on The Barron Knights' record, "Merrie Gentle Pops":
- Andy, SandieSandie ShawSandie Shaw is an English pop singer, who was one of the most successful British female singers of the 1960s. In 1967 she was the first UK act to win the Eurovision Song Contest...
, PitneyGene PitneyEugene Francis Alan Pitney, known as Gene Pitney , was an American singer-songwriter, musician and sound engineer. Through the mid-1960s, he enjoyed success as a recording artist on both sides of the Atlantic and was among the group of early 1960s American acts who continued to enjoy hits after the...
, ProbyP. J. ProbyP.J. Proby is an American singer, songwriter, and actor, who has portrayed Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison in musical theater productions as well as enjoying a successful recording career in his own right....
, - Cathy McGowan and Jonathan KingJonathan KingJonathan King is an English singer, songwriter, impresario and record producer. He is also the author of three novels, Bible Two and The Booker Prize Winner , and Beware the Monkey Man , and an autobiography, 65 My Life So Far .King first came to prominence as an...
.
The following summer McGowan was among celebrities - "a more glittering line up of guests could hardly be imagined" - at the opening in June of Sibylla, a nightclub close to Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
in London.
Impact on the "swinging" sixties
McGowan was an early patron of BibaBiba
Biba was an iconic and popular London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. It was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.-Early years:...
, whose first store opened in September 1964, and had her own fashion range at British Home Stores. She endorsed a portable make-up set known as "Cathy's Survival Kit". Barbara Hulanicki
Barbara Hulanicki
Barbara Hulanicki is a Warsaw-born fashion designer, known for being the founder of the iconic clothes store Biba. Born in Warsaw, to Polish parents, after studying at Brighton School of Art, now the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts, Hulanicki won a London Evening Standard competition for...
, who founded Biba, observed that "the girls aped Cathy's long hair and eye-covering fringe and soon their little faces were growing heavy with stage make-up". Julia Dykins, half-sister of John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
of the Beatles, recalled how, despite wearing black eye make-up, black polo neck
Polo neck
A polo neck or turtle neck or skivvy is a garment—usually a sweater—with a close-fitting, round, and high collar that folds over and covers the neck...
s and dyed black jeans
Jeans
Jeans are trousers made from denim. Some of the earliest American blue jeans were made by Jacob Davis, Calvin Rogers, and Levi Strauss in 1873. Starting in the 1950s, jeans, originally designed for cowboys, became popular among teenagers. Historic brands include Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler...
"à la Cathy McGowan", she was unable to convince doormen at the Cavern Club in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, where the Beatles came to prominence, that she was over 18, the age for admission. It has been claimed that the formation in 1966 of a British Society for the Preservation of the Miniskirt was prompted by McGowan's indicating that she would wear a long skirt on RSG.
After Fordyce’s departure in March 1965, McGowan continued to present RSG until it ended on 23 December 1966. In 1965 a decision that artists should perform live gave it immediacy that its longer-running BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
rival, Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
(1964–2006), never acquired; indeed, the latter retained a Mancunian
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
model Samantha Juste
Samantha Juste
Samantha Juste , became known on British television in the mid-1960s as the “disc girl” on the BBC’s Top of the Pops. In 1968 she married Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. Their daughter is the actress Ami Dolenz....
- in television, McGowan's rival - as its "disc girl" until 1967. Although RSGs momentum had begun to flag, it had become a "cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
programme" whose impact on music and, through McGowan, on the "swinging" sixties
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
more generally was widely acknowledged. As Sandbrook put it, "Thanks to the enthusiastic salesmanship of McGowan and her fellow presenters, the emerging youth culture that had once been confined to the capital [London] or to the great cities could now be seen and copied almost immediately from Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
to the Highlands
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...
". The musician and jazz critic George Melly
George Melly
Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.-Early life and career:He was born in Liverpool and was educated at Stowe...
thought RSG "made pop music work on a truly national scale ... It was almost possible to feel a tremor of pubescent excitement from Land's End
Land's End
Land's End is a headland and small settlement in west Cornwall, England, within the United Kingdom. It is located on the Penwith peninsula approximately eight miles west-southwest of Penzance....
to John O'Groats".
McGowan, who was a 5 foot 4½ inch (1.63m) brunette, modelled and also presented a show on Radio Luxembourg
Radio Luxembourg (English)
Radio Luxembourg is a commercial broadcaster in many languages from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is nowadays known in most non-English languages as RTL ....
.
After
Ready Steady Go! Once RSG had ended, McGowan's star began to wane. By way of illustration, the Sunday Times, previewing an exhibition of photographs by Patrick, Earl of Lichfield 40 years later, has described Queens use of his shots in 1967:[Lichfield] was ... a great one for persuading people to join in, even if the outcome was not always the one they expected. In the 1960s he took a series of group portraits for Queen magazine supposedly documenting the movers and shakers of the time - except that some, such as Jonathan AitkenJonathan AitkenJonathan William Patrick Aitken is a former Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and British government minister. He was convicted of perjury in 1999 and received an 18-month prison sentence, of which he served seven months...
and Cathy McGowan, were deemed not to be "in", and were labelled as "out" in the magazine. But Lichfield, with his impeccable manners, refused to upset his subjects by letting them know that in advance.
However, in 1978, McGowan was the subject of a tribute - "I'm in love with Cathy McGowan" - by the English band Generation X
Generation X (band)
Generation X was a British punk rock band, formed on 21 November 1976 by Billy Idol, Tony James and John Towe.-History:...
in the song Ready Steady Go, a single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
that hit #47 on the UK charts. The social historian Alwyn W. Turner has cited the band's "hymning" of McGowan as an example of punk's indebtedness to mod culture.
Later work
McGowan continued in journalism and broadcasting. She was a board member of London’s Capital RadioCapital Radio
Capital London is a London based radio station which launched on 16 October 1973 and is owned by Global Radio. On 3 January 2011 it formed part of the nine station Capital radio network.- Pre-launch :...
when it was launched in 1973. In the late 1980s she worked for the BBC's Newsroom South East, specialising in entertainment. She interviewed celebrities, including some she had known in the 1960s and others such as singer Michael Ball
Michael Ball (singer)
Michael Ashley Ball, born 27 June 1962) is a British actor, singer, and radio and TV presenter who is best known for the song "Love Changes Everything" and musical theatre roles such as Marius in Les Misérables, Alex in Aspects of Love, Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Edna Turnblad...
, who became her partner, and Deborah Harry
Debbie Harry
Deborah Ann "Debbie" Harry is an American singer-songwriter and actress, best known for being the lead singer of the punk rock and new wave band Blondie. She has also had success as a solo artist, and in the mid-1990s she performed and recorded as part of The Jazz Passengers...
, formerly of Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
, whom she described as the most beautiful woman she had met. In 1991, McGowan co-hosted with Alexei Sayle
Alexei Sayle
Alexei David Sayle is a British stand-up comedian, actor and author. He was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007...
and Jonathan Ross
Jonathan Ross (television presenter)
Jonathan Stephen Ross, OBE is an English television and radio presenter, best known for presenting the BBC One chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross from 2001 until he left the BBC in 2010. Ross began hosting a new chat show on ITV1 starting 3 September 2011...
a show by British comedians to mark the 30th anniversary of Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
.
Family
In 1970 McGowan married actor Hywel BennettHywel Bennett
Hywel Thomas Bennett is a Welsh film and television actor. Bennett is best known for his recurring title role as James Shelley in the television sitcom Shelley from 1979 to 1984 and its sequel The Return of Shelley from 1988 to 1992....
, who appeared in such films as The Family Way
The Family Way
The Family Way is a 1966 British comedy-drama film based on Bill Naughton's play All in Good Time . It began life in 1961 as a television play entitled Honeymoon Postponed....
(1966) and The Virgin Soldiers
The Virgin Soldiers
The Virgin Soldiers is a 1966 comic novel by Leslie Thomas, inspired by his own experiences of National Service in the British Army.The novel was turned into a film The Virgin Soldiers in 1969, directed by John Dexter, with a screenplay by the British screenwriter John Hopkins. It starred Hywel...
(1969). They had a daughter, Emma. The marriage was dissolved in 1988 and, since the early 1990s, she has been the partner of Michael Ball
Michael Ball (singer)
Michael Ashley Ball, born 27 June 1962) is a British actor, singer, and radio and TV presenter who is best known for the song "Love Changes Everything" and musical theatre roles such as Marius in Les Misérables, Alex in Aspects of Love, Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Edna Turnblad...
. Ball was godfather to McGowan's grandson, Connor, son of Emma.
McGowan's brother John McGowan was a disc jockey in 1965 on King Radio
Radio 390
Radio 390 was a pirate radio station which operated from Red Sands Fort, near Whitstable), a former Maunsell Fort located on the Red Sands sandbar....
, a pirate radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
station broadcasting from a fort in the Thames Estuary
Thames Estuary
The Thames Mouth is the estuary in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of Sea Reach, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary...
. In the mid 1990s the death from ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a cancerous growth arising from the ovary. Symptoms are frequently very subtle early on and may include: bloating, pelvic pain, difficulty eating and frequent urination, and are easily confused with other illnesses....
of his wife Angela, a friend of McGowan since their teens, led to his becoming co-founder of a charity supporting research into the disease.