Lesley Riddoch is one of Scotland’s best-known commentators and broadcasters. Lesley was born in Wolverhampton to a mother from Wick and a dad from Banffshire, grew up in Belfast, moved to Glasgow at the age of 13, went to Oxford University (where she was the first non-Tory President of the Student's Union), did a post-graduate journalism course at Cardiff University and completed a PhD at Strathclyde University in 2020. She still gets around a lot.
She is best known for broadcasting with programmes on BBC2, Channel 4, Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland, for which she won two Sony speech broadcaster awards but was also Assistant Editor of the Scotsman and edited the paper when it became the Scotswoman on International Women’s Day 1995, and was part of the start-up team for the Sunday Herald. She’s written weekly columns for the National since its inception in 2014 and used to write for the Herald, Scotsman & Guardian. Lesley was a member of the trust that helped the people of Eigg buy their own island in 1997 and founded Africawoman, a charity that trained female journalists across the continent. In 2020 she won the Saltire Society Fletcher of Saltoun Award for her contribution to public life.
Lesley has co-presented a weekly Lesley Riddoch Podcast for more than a decade - now with North Fife neighbour Patrick Joyce. She has written five books (the latest Thrive explores the case for independence) and co-produced/presented six films (the latest about Denmark is being screened across Scotland in early 2024). The other films about Norway, Faroes, Iceland, Estonia and the Declaration of Arbroath are online here where the Denmark film will also be available once the cinema screenings are complete in March.
Lesley is co-founder and director of the Scottish think tank Nordic Horizons which has brought dozens of Nordic specialists over to Scotland to speak with (and hopefully inspire) MSPs, civil servants and the Scottish public since 2011.
