![]() She speaks candidly: “It makes me quite emotional. She set up the Culture and Community Spaces at Risk office to support grassroots sites, created an LGBTQ+ venues forum, and during the pandemic put together an emergency fund for these spaces. ![]() That’s why much of her work as night czar has been about stemming the closure of LGBTQ+ venues in London, with 58% vanishing from the city from 2006 to 2017. ![]() Today, there are more venues the queer community can go and feel welcome, but “we’ll always need our own safe spaces,” the 53-year-old says. ![]() And since, she’s unapologetically brandished the torch for LGBTQ+ nightlife. “I feel very proud to have what I think is the best job in the world”Īmong these was Simon Casson, and the duo launched club night Duckie at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, carving a niche for beer, Bowie and performance art in a queer scene hounded by electronic dance tracks and cheesy disco. “I just wanted to live my best life really,” she muses, looking back fondly on the LGBTQ+ Soho late-night café-bar where she found her feet: “It was, like, one of the first in London to open where you didn’t have to be secretive so that atmosphere was very refreshing, there were people from all over the world that worked there and I met loads of friends.” She was enchanted by the city a shining “beacon” for people wanting to be themselves. So how did the New Jersey local become the mouthpiece for London nightlife? She takes us back 32 years, when she left her waterside hometown, Keyport, for England’s capital. But that’s what leadership is, and I just have to carry on.”Ī czar is born: Lamé was appointed as night czar in 2016 Lamé speaks generally on these kinds of comments: “It’s inevitable I’ll get some criticism because you can’t please everyone all the time. A 2018 article in NME begged the question, ‘London night czar Amy Lamé, what exactly is the point of you?’ Well, let’s find out for ourselves. But it’s not the first time the night czar has made her way to headlines. Our interview took place before all of this. A spokesperson for London mayor Sadiq Khan has defended her “important job” to support and promote sectors worth billions of pounds. “I’ve been working closely with businesses, venues, boroughs and Londoners to support them throughout these challenges, and I’m delighted that London’s hospitality industry sales outpaced the rest of the UK last year,” she wrote in The Independent, citing the “huge challenges” faced by hospitality across the country in recent years: the pandemic, Brexit, the cost-of-living crisis, rising rents and business rates. But this week, she’s been slammed in the press for ‘globetrotting’ to Australia, Italy and Spain on a £117,000 salary while London loses 1,165 venues in three years – a rate one Tory MP said “would make the Blitz blush”. So, after a breakneck journey darting through tourists and speeding the DLR I’m face-to-face with Amy Lamé as cable cars meander peacefully past the window, gentle giants, in a slick glass building in east London, where the mayor’s office has been based, I learn, since 2022.Įight years have passed since Lamé became London’s first night czar in 2016. She has hosted the Miss Illinois/Miss America Pageant in Chicago, as well as the Miles to Fight Melanoma Race and the March of Dimes’ “Dancing with the Stars” competition in Chicago.It turns out there are two city halls. Amy volunteers her time in her neighborhood, speaking to students about weather and supporting humanitarian projects. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Geosciences from Mississippi State University, with a focus on Severe Weather and Forecasting. in Communications with a focus on Broadcast Journalism. Brigham Young University awarded her a B.A. She formerly worked as a meteorologist at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, as a morning meteorologist at KMGH-TV in Denver, and on Portland’s KPTV’s local morning news program “Good Day Oregon.” Her work has earned her multiple Emmy Awards, including “Best Weathercaster,” “Outstanding Host,” and “Surviving Severe Weather,” her weather special.Īmy graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in environmental sciences. She also has Seals of Approval from the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association.Īmy joined Channel 7’s Eyewitness News Weather Team in 2011 after working for Fox News in Chicago as the Chief Meteorologist. Amy is one of just a handful of women in the world to hold the American Meteorological Society’s distinguished Certified Broadcast Meteorologist designation.
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