Stephen Jardine

Stephen Jardine (born 1963) is a Scottish journalist and presenter. He has worked for Scottish Television, GMTV and Radio Tay. He now runs Scotland's first dedicated food and drink communications consultancy, Taste Communications.

Early years

Born in Dumfries, Jardine is the son of the late Bill Jardine, a former Chairman of the town's Queen of the South football club. Stephen is a fan of the club.^[1][2]

Career

Jardine started his journalistic career as a reporter at Radio Tay before joining Scottish Television (now STV Central) to work on Scotland Today.^[1]

When GMTV was set up in 1993, he left STV to become the breakfast station's Scotland Correspondent. He then moved to Paris as Europe Correspondent,^[1] and also presented on the GMTV sofa covering stories ranging from the death of the Princess of Wales to the Cannes Film Festival.

Jardine left GMTV in December 1999 and returned to STV as host of the station's Millennium Hogmanay Show live from the centre of Edinburgh, then he moved on to presenting the afternoon talk show Room at the Top and his own evening chat show Tonight at the Top. He has also presented a number of current affairs programmes for the station, such as Seven Days, Wheel Nuts, Sunday Live and the channel's coverage of The State Opening of the Scottish Parliament. Jardine has also fronted feature programmes for STV including Drivetime, Summer Discovery, Wheel Nuts, Rich, Gifted & Scots and The Talent.

Up until February 2007, he presented a Saturday morning show on Talk 107, the now-defunct Edinburgh-based radio station between 10am and 1pm.

Up until December 2007, Jardine presented Scotland Today's East news opt-out, and anchored the main bulletin on Friday night, job sharing with John MacKay. He was also a regular stand-in presenter/producer of the programme's online video blog, (Not) The Real MacKay.

From Monday 28 January 2008, Jardine, along with Debi Edward (now Scotland Correspondent for ITV News), and later Rachel McTavish presented STV's daily magazine programme, The Five Thirty Show, broadcasting across the station's Northern and Central regions. The programme ended on Friday 22 May 2009, to be replaced by The Hour, airing weekdays at 5pm from Tuesday 26 May, with Jardine and Michelle McManus hosting. In May 2011, Jardine announced he would leave STV at the end of the month and pursue other projects.^[3] He now runs Taste Communications, a PR company specialising in promoting Scottish food and drink.^[4] Taste Communications also announced that Peter Lederer, former head of VisitScotland will be the company chairman.^[5]

Jardine occasionally stands in for Fred MacAulay on his BBC Radio Scotland show MacAulay and Co.

References

External links