Ready Steady Go! (RSG) was first broadcast in August 1963, coinciding with the rise of
the Beatles 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 to 7 pm. Its original presenter
Keith Fordyce (1928–2011), a stalwart of the
BBC Light Programme and
Radio Luxembourg, was joined in 1964 by McGowan and
Michael Aldred. 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
Radio 1 disc jockey, by answering "fashion" to a question from
Elkan Allan (1922–2006), RSG's executive producer and head of entertainment at Rediffusion, as to whether sex, music or fashion was most important to
teenagers. McGowan seemed in tune with the times, "the girl of the day", according to
Eric Burdon of the
Animals (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 RSG's 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". In the words of
Dominic Sandbrook, 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 Road party where the performers themselves had only just chanced to drop by'. 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". 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
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 RSG's momentum had begun to flag, its impact on music and, through McGowan, on the
"swinging" '60s 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 tremour of pubescent excitement from
Land's End to
John O'Groats". McGowan, who was a 5 ft 4½in (1.64m) brunette, modelled and also presented a show on
Radio Luxembourg. ==After
Ready Steady Go!==