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Profile: Anne-Marie Minhall. Born in 1957, Anne-Marie studied drama in her home town of Nottingham, but started her broadcasting career for Radio Trent in 1984. Here she quickly gained popularity around both Derby and Nottingham as presenter of the networked late night talk show from 10pm-1am, called 'Radio Trent Talkback'. (Do you remember the telephone number - 0602 344 301?).
She latterly became one of the main newsreaders in the Derby studio of Radio Trent 945 / Trent FM 102.8 and stayed on duty through the takeover of owning group Midlands Radio plc by GWR Group in 1994. Andy Marriott was influential in creating a spoonerised version of her name, and so Anne-Marie Manhole Cover was created. She was on duty reading the news over the first couple of weeks of airing of what became known as RAM-FM, but having seen the results of the takeover, took her news reading talents to London's Independent Radio News (IRN) in the same year.
In 1996, she took another post of news reader at Classic FM, which ended up taking her back into the payroll of GWR.
Her first radio memory is of listening to cricket commentary - Anne-Marie is an avid cricket fan - and she spent many happy hours listening to Brian Johnston (Johnners) and his team commentating on Australian Test Cricket during the early hours of the morning. Her best radio moment was when she was interviewing Pavarotti at his Italian home, sitting outside by the pool, looking out to sea - she was thinking 'I've got the best job in the world....'. Her worst moment was being on the wrong end of a knife thrower's act for a live interview on Trent FM. For her dream job, she merely says something which sums up her current job...'..more of the same please....'.
Outside of the business, Anne-Marie can rustle up a good hot curry, and can belt out a good tune on a tin whistle she had for Christmas.
Whereabouts: She is Classic FM's news editor, she presents 'The Great Composers' on Sundays and is also currently co-presenting the Saturday breakfast show 6:00am-9:00am with Mark Forrest and Tim Lihoreau - a mix of comedy, news and music, plus her solo breakfast show weekdays from 5:00am-7:00am. She also occasionally presents other station programming.