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\n\tVicki Wickham, the pioneering British television producer, music executive and artist manager who worked on the television series Ready, Steady, Go!<\/em>, died Aug. 1 in New York City following an extended illness. She was 87.<\/p>\n\n\tWickham played a defining role in promoting the acts behind the British beat explosion. As talent booker and later producer of ITV\u2019s Ready, Steady, Go!<\/em>, a live pop performance show, from 1963 to 1966, she helped introduce a generation of artists \u2013 including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Yardbirds and Cilla Black \u2013 to millions of viewers at home.<\/p>\n\n
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\n\tThe Beatles appeared on Ready, Steady, Go!<\/em> three times in 1963 and 1964 as Beatlemania spread around the globe, while Wickham was pivotal in showcasing Motown to British audiences. Wickham booked The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and The Temptations, among others, for the programme.<\/p>\n\n\tWickham also produced an hour-long live television special devoted to James Brown. She later brought in performers such as Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Patti LaBelle and Berry Gordy for subsequent specials.<\/p>\n
\n\tQuoted in Andy Neill\u2019s 2020 book, Ready, Steady, Go!: The Weekend Starts Here<\/em>, Gordy recalled: \u201cThe wonderful Vicki Wickham had convinced her boss to do a one-hour TV special.\u00a0The Sound of Motown<\/em>\u00a0was a big moment for us because it brought our music and our artists to the U.K.\u2019s national television audience for the first time. We will always remember and appreciate the love and the loyalty of the British people and the part\u00a0Ready, Steady, Go!<\/em>\u00a0played in our success around the world.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tBorn in Newbury, Berkshire, England, Wickham began her career at London publisher Cassell & Co. before joining BBC Radio\u2019s Light Entertainment Department, where she worked on audio documentaries. A chance introduction to producer Elkan Allan led to her involvement with Ready, Steady, Go!<\/em> just as the first wave of British pop music was starting to take off.<\/p>\n\n\tShe went on to manage Labelle and Dusty Springfield, guiding the latter\u2019s career through the late 1980s and bringing Springfield together with Pet Shop Boys for the 1987 hit \u201cWhat Have I Done to Deserve This?\u201d. Wickham later co-authored Springfield\u2019s biography, Dancing With Demons<\/em>, with Penny Valentine.<\/p>\n\n\tWickham received the Music Industry Woman of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, and in 2013 was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music, receiving the honour from then-Prince Charles.<\/p>\n
\n\tWickham is survived by her wife, singer-songwriter Nona Hendryx. The couple first met in the 1960s when Hendryx performed with Labelle and married in 2011. Private family gatherings will be held in New York City and London, with a larger public celebration of Wickham\u2019s life to be announced at a later date.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/pro\/vicki-wickham-music-television-producer-death\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/vicki-wickham-with-nona-hendry-cr-adrian-bryan-brown-billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard Vicki Wickham, the pioneering British television producer, music executive and artist manager who worked on the television series Ready, Steady, Go!, died Aug. 1 in New York City following an extended illness. She was 87. Wickham played a defining role in promoting the acts behind the British beat explosion. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-2076826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2076826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2076826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2076826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2076826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}