Kirsty Young discussed living with chronic pain on Desert Island Discs (Picture: Getty)
Kirsty Young has opened up on being forced to step back from her broadcasting career due to her chronic pain condition, saying it caused her to question her own identity.
The 54-year-old hosted nearly 500 editions of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs between 2006 and 2018 before having to leave the show to undergo treatment for fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Appearing on a special edition of the castaway programme airing on Christmas Day, Young said she is now feeling ‘so much better’.
She began by explaining that she originally spent a year seeing different specialists before finding a professor of rheumatology who diagnosed her and warned that she had to take her condition ‘seriously’ if she wanted to get better.
‘It was said with extreme kindness but it was just a moment of absolute reality and clarity, and I remember I pulled my car over and just had a good old, to use a good Scottish word, a good old greet (cry) and I thought “right, well, them’s the facts and you’re really going to have to think about this”,’ Young told now-presenter Lauren Laverne.
The presenter admitted she began to question her own identity (Picture: BBC)
‘I’m very aware in talking about this, 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 a 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. So, I had to take it seriously if I was going to get better. So, I did.’
Young admitted that she felt ‘very shaky’ having to leave her broadcast job, which she ‘absolutely loved’ and had intended to do until they made her leave.
She added: ‘I thought if I’m not that, what am I for? What is a Kirsty for? I did feel that.
‘That was ridiculous, obviously, because to use that well-worn phrase, “The cracks are where the light gets in”, and all sorts of other things happened that were good things.
‘At that moment, you kind of lose yourself. And when you’re in chronic pain, you sort of lose yourself anyway so there’s a lot going on.’
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Young is one of the most recognisable presenters and voices in the UK, having been active on television since the early 1990s.
She’s notably fronted BBC’s Crimewatch and Radio 4’s beloved series Desert Island Discs, and was at the helm of Channel 5 News in the 1990s and 2000s.
Young led much of the coverage over the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June, ending her absence from television screens.
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‘I was in pain and a chronic long-term pain condition is an absolute pain, literally and metaphorically, to deal with.’
