KIRSTY YOUNG has been chosen to succeed Sue Lawley as the presenter of Desert Island Discs, one of the most coveted jobs in British radio.

The 37-year-old Scottish broadcaster will take on the BBC Radio 4 role alongside her main job as presenter of Five News, for which she earns £500,000 a year.

The 64-year-old radio programme, in which guests are asked to name the eight records they would take with them to an island, is broadcast on Sunday mornings.

The show has sometimes elicited intimate details from its guests. Ms Lawley persuaded Tony Blair to reveal how he courted Cherie, and Michael Howard told of his grandmother’s death in Auschwitz.

Ms Young said that she was looking forward to her first broadcast in October.

“I’ve loved Desert Island Discs for as long as I’ve been listening to radio,” she said. “Its enduring success is testament to the brilliant format and consistently fascinating guests.”

Ms Young will be only the fourth interviewer since Roy Plomley hosted the first broadcast on January 29, 1942. He continued until his death in 1985, when he was succeeded by Michael Parkinson. Ms Lawley has presented the show for 18 years. She announced her retirement on April 12 this year.

Ms Young began her broadcasting career in 1989 as a continuity announcer for BBC Radio Scotland. In 1992 she became a newscaster for Scotland Today and hosted a chat show.

She joined the news team of Channel 5 when it was launched in 1997, but left after two years to work for ITV, where she hosted a quiz show. She returned to Five, as Channel 5 is now known, in 2002 as anchorwoman for the news bulletins. By perching on her desk rather than sitting behind it, she pioneered a casual style of newsreading.

Although Ms Young’s own desert island record selections are unknown, she once said: “I could probably recite every lyric from Blondie’s Parallel Lines.”

Mr Plomley’s widow, Diana, has been vocal in the past in her criticism of the BBC’s choice of presenters. When Michael Parkinson was appointed, she expressed a preference for Sir John Mortimer. She believed that Ms Lawley demonstrated an “extraordinary obsession with other people’s sex lives”.

Mrs Plomley was not available for comment yesterday.

AN ENDURING SUCCESS STORY

• Created by Roy Plomley. He presented the first show on January 29, 1942
• Princess Margaret, George Clooney, Stephen Hawking and the past five prime ministers have been guests
• David Dimbleby, presenter of Question Time on BBC One, and Michael Palin, the Monty Python star, were mooted for the job
• The programme rights are owned by Mr Plomley’s estate, which was consulted over the choice of presenter