Lesley Riddoch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lesley Anne Riddoch (born February 1960) is a Scottish radio broadcaster, activist and journalist who lives in Fife. During the 1990s, she was a contributing editor of the Sunday Herald and an assistant editor of The Scotsman. Since 2004, she has run her own independent radio and podcast company, Feisty Ltd. In 2006, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.
Born 1960 in Wolverhampton, England, Riddoch moved with her Scottish parents to Belfast in 1963, then to Glasgow in 1973, where she attended Drewsteignton, a fee-paying private school then located in the affluent suburb of Bearsden. In 1978 she attended the University of Oxford and graduated with an honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She was also elected president of the student union in 1981. After graduating she studied for a postgraduate diploma in journalism at Cardiff University.
Journalism
She founded and directed the feminist magazine Harpies and Quines, which launched in 1992.[1] During its lifetime, it was sued by the publication Harpers & Queen. The magazine ceased trading in 1994, having been declared bankrupt after cashflow problems.[1]
From 1993 to 1999 she was a contributing editor of the Sunday Herald and an assistant editor of The Scotsman 1994–1996.[2] She was editor of a special one-off edition of The Scotsman on 8 March 1995 rebranding as The Scotswoman produced by the paper's female staff.[3][4] Riddoch herself featured on the front page when this rebranding occurred again to mark International Women's Day in 2016.[5]
Writing columns for The National, The Scotsman, and occasionally The Guardian, in 2006 she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize,[6] an award given to those judged to be making political writing into an art form.
Radio
From 1989 to 1994 she presented the BBC Radio Scotland programme Speaking Out and was an occasional relief presenter for the Radio Four programme You and Yours. In 1993 Riddoch won a Cosmopolitan woman award for Communication, and in 1994 her Radio Scotland production team won a best talk show award. One of the Speaking Out programmes took the Silver Quill Law Society award that same year.
Between 1999 and 2005, she had her own daily radio programme on Radio Scotland.[7]
Television
Riddoch presented television programmes of which include The Midnight Hour on BBC2, and The People's Parliament and Powerhouse on Channel 4.[8]
She runs her own independent radio, podcast and TV production company known as Feisty Ltd. In 2004 she chaired the Celtic Film and Television Festival, a small festival rewarding non-English language productions. In 2008, she produced and presented an independent documentary about the history and development of the Dundee waterfront called The Great Tay Bridge Mystery – Who Dunnit?.
