Television and radio presenter. Born in East Kilbride and brought up in Stirling, where she attended Stirling High School, Young began her career on BBC Radio Scotland as a newsreader in 1989. In 1992, she moved to Scottish Television (STV) as presenter of Scotland Today, their regional news programme. It was for STV that she made her name with her own chat-show, Kirsty, but it had limited success (1994).
She came to national attention as a presenter of the new Channel 5 TV news (1997), which adopted a novel informal format. This resulted in Young winning the prestigious Sir James Carreras Award for Outstanding New Talent (1997). She won the Newscaster of the Year award (1998). In the same year, she became a presenter on Talk Radio and served as host of the long-running show Desert Islands Discs on BBC Radio 4 (2006-19). She also presented Crimewatch. for the BBC (2008-15).
She is married to Nick Jones, a wealthy businessman who made his money in hospitality. The couple maintain homes in London and Somerset, and bought Inchconnachan, an island in Loch Lomond in 2022.
