Vicki Wickham, the pioneering British television producer, music executive and artist manager best known for her work on the ITV pop show Ready, Steady, Go!, has died aged 87 in New York City after an extended illness. As talent booker and later producer of the programme from 1963 to 1966, she played a defining role in bringing acts of the British beat boom, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, into millions of homes, while also championing Motown artists such as The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye to British audiences.

Born in Newbury, Berkshire, Wickham began her career at publisher Cassell & Co. and the BBC before joining Ready, Steady, Go! She later managed Labelle and Dusty Springfield, whose career she guided into the late 1980s, notably pairing her with the Pet Shop Boys for 1987's "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" Wickham received a Music Industry Woman of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 and was made an OBE in 2013. She is survived by her wife, singer Nona Hendryx, whom she married in 2011.