Vicki Wickham, the British television producer and talent booker who helped shape 1960s pop music through her work on the seminal ITV show Ready, Steady, Go!, has died aged 87. She passed away in New York on Saturday after an extended illness, according to her wife and long-term partner, Labelle singer Nona Hendryx. As talent booker and later producer on the show, which aired from 1963 to 1966, Wickham gave many major acts of the British beat boom, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, some of their earliest and most significant national television exposure.

Beyond her work on Ready, Steady, Go!, Wickham was instrumental in introducing Motown artists such as The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye to British audiences, and she produced the first hour-long live UK television show to feature a Black music artist, James Brown. Born in Berkshire in 1939, she went on to manage Dusty Springfield, one of the show's most frequent performers, and later Labelle. She began her broadcasting career after being introduced to producer Elkan Allan, who was developing the pilot for what would become Ready, Steady, Go!.