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Kirsty Young presented almost 500 editions of Desert Island Discs between 2006 and 2018, including highly memorable interviews with Tom Hanks, Dame Judi Dench and David Beckham. Ill health forced her to step back from broadcasting, but she returned this year after a four year break to present TV coverage of the Platinum Jubilee. In September she was part of the ±«Óãtv team covering the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, and her closing words, as she ended the live TV broadcast after the service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, moved many of the millions viewing at the time.

She first worked in radio and television in her native Scotland, presenting for the ±«Óãtv and Scottish Television. In 1997 she was part of the launch of Channel 5, anchoring the news while famously perching on the studio desk rather than sitting behind it. She also presented the ±«Óãtv’s Crimewatch for many years.

Here’s what we learned from her Desert Island Discs...

1. A chance conversation in a bar sparked her interest in a broadcasting career

Kirsty was planning to go to university, and had no plans to work in radio or TV until an unexpected opportunity arose while she had a summer job in a bar: “I was serving a pint to a very nice guy one evening,” she recalls. “He was a freelance TV camera operator and his runner had gone sick.”

“He did sports and I thought: ‘Well, next weekend rather than working here, maybe I can lift those camera cases’. They used to call it a runner. I started to work on motorsport shoots and football shoots - neither of which I'm interested in - but it didn't matter.”

“I loved it. I loved it because it was this whole hidden world and I thought: ‘Look at all these people doing jobs that they really love.’”

“So I said to my parents, 'I might not go to college because I'm working with runners who've got degrees, who've done four years of college, and they're four years older than me and now they've got a job as a runner.'”

“To their great credit they said, ‘Well, that's fine then. As long as you keep working and you do that, then you carry on.’”

2. Her first disc reminds her of some important advice

Kirsty had been presenting Desert Island Discs for just over a year when the virtuoso cellist Steven Isserlis was her castaway. She asked about his recording of the solo cello works by J S Bach, music which is widely regarded as a pinnacle of the repertoire, and highly demanding for the performer.

“I said to him: ‘When you listen back to it...’ and he said: ‘I've never listened back to it,’” Kirsty recalls.

“And I said, ‘Why is that?’ ‘Just, well, a dog doesn't go back and inspect its own mess.’”

“I learned something from that, from him, which is: we are all usually our own worst critics. It's not a bad thing to be because you can end up with good work.”

Kirsty selects Steven’s recording of the Prelude from the first Bach Cello Suite as her first disc: “I think it's utterly beautiful. Steven’s never heard it, but I've heard it so many times. This is something I listen to a lot.”

3. One of her discs evokes teenage fun with her sister Laura

Looking back at her school days, Kirsty remembers how she found herself in the shadow of her highly successful older sister: “I was three years younger and always in awe of her – still sort of am. She is my best friend.”

“Apart from [the subjects] that I liked, I was really average at everything else, and also I kept encountering teachers who'd say [in an incredulous voice]: ‘So you're Laura Young’s sister?’ Because Laura was effortlessly academic, which was sickening if you were me and puzzling if you were a teacher. I felt in her shadow so I had to find my own things.”

Those things included public speaking and writing for the school newspaper – interests which were perhaps clues to her future career, although no one thought that at the time.

And Kirsty’s second disc reminds her of the fun she had with her sister: “Laura and my brother Ian really properly make me laugh. Probably like no other people. Laura was in a charity fashion show when she was a teenager, and sometimes I still persuade her to do the funny dance that she originally did to this track when I was a teenager.”

The track is My Baby Just Cares for Me by Nina Simone.

4. Her distinctive deep voice got her thrown out of one after-school club

“I got chucked out of the school choir when I was at high school,” says Kirsty. “I remember the music teacher - it was sort of self-selecting, you just went along after school. And he said, ‘Hey, hey, Ol’ Man River! Out! Out!’”

“And even now, if I'm staying in a hotel and order room service, they say: ‘It’ll be with you, sir, in 40 minutes.’ Yes, I know I've got a slightly... it's a deep voice, but it was good later.”

5. She first reached a wider audience by breaking the conventions of TV news

Kirsty joined Channel 5 in 1997 to host the main news bulletin each day, and her less formal approach to presentation, including perching on the studio desk rather than sitting behind it, soon attracted comment.

“Within two or three weeks of being on air, we got a wonderful front page in a section of a broadsheet. What it said is: ‘Why this woman is changing the face of television news.’ I wasn't. The editors and the producers and the people who'd formatted the programme were - I just happened to be the person at the front doing that.”

Kirsty also recalls that some thought these experiments in news broadcasting would fail – particularly when presented by a woman with a Scottish accent: “I certainly met on occasion a nice little dash of snobbery and misogyny, but that's not unique to me… I definitely remember being at a launch and I was chatting away to an English female film producer who said… ‘Are you going to do it in that voice?’ Well, it's the only one I've got! I was absolutely astonished by that.”

6. Illness forced her to make very difficult choices – and question her own identity

Kirsty decided to step back from all broadcasting work in 2018 following the advice of a doctor she describes as “a brilliant man, a brilliant professor of rheumatology.”

She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body, and rheumatoid arthritis. She recalls the advice she received: “You have to reduce the stress in your life, and you have to take this seriously, and you can't just keep shovelling painkillers down your neck,’ which don't work anyway and feel shocking.”

“I'm very aware in talking about this that people sit opposite physicians and get diagnoses that are much more serious than the one I got, but it's a very painful thing and I was in pain, and that chronic long term pain condition is an absolute pain, literally and metaphorically to deal with.”

“It grinds you away. You lose your personality. You lose your sense of humour. You lose your sense of self. There's all sorts of things that go with it. It's awful. And so I had to take it seriously if I was going to get better. So I did.”

“I felt very shaky about it because... I'd worked and I had a job that I absolutely loved and intended to do until they chucked me out the door really.”

“And I thought, ‘If I'm not that, what am I now? What am I for? What's a Kirsty for?’”

“I did feel that and that was ridiculous, obviously, because to use that well-worn phrase, the cracks are where the light gets in. All sorts of other things happened that were good things. But at that moment you do lose yourself, and when you're in chronic daily pain, you sort of lose yourself anyway. There's a lot going on. The thing I wanted most was to try to figure out how to get on top of this thing.”

7. Her choice of an ideal deserted island doesn’t have palm trees and warm waters

“If I was suitably attired, I'd like a tiny beautiful Scottish Island: actually I used to go walking with my dearest group of Scottish girlfriends and I had to give it up for a few years and that made me quite miserable. But I'm back walking again and we went this year to Kerrera, a tiny little, exquisite... in fact... too many people go walking [there]. But it's very, very beautiful,” says Kirsty laughing.

And as for coping with the solitude, she says: “I've got a vibrant inner dialogue, sometimes too vibrant!”

“I don't mind my own company. I mean, it's easy to say that, isn't it? How long would I last? I'd probably go kind of crackers after three days!”