Stephen Jardine


Stephen Jardine is a Scottish journalist, broadcaster and presenter. He has worked for the BBC, Scottish Television, GMTV and Radio Tay.

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.

Career

Jardine started his journalistic career as a reporter at Radio Tay before joining Scottish Television to work on Scotland Today.
He left STV in 1994 to become GMTVs Scotland Correspondent. He then moved to Paris as Europe Correspondent, 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 election programming 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 along with four live Hogmanay shows.
Up until February 2007, he presented a Saturday morning show on Talk 107, the now-defunct Edinburgh-based radio station between 10am and 1pm.
Jardine regularly presented STV's main flagship news programme "Scotland Today" as well as the programme's online video blog, The Real MacKay.
For his presenting work with STV, Jardine received a Royal Television Society Regional Presenter of the Year award.
From Monday 28 January 2008, Jardine, along with Debi Edward, 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 had decided to leave would leave STV after ten years with the station
He went on to launch Scotland's first dedicated food and drink media company.
Taste Communications also announced that Peter Lederer, former head of VisitScotland will be the company chairman.
Alongside his business interests, Jardine is now a regular presenter on BBC Radio Scotland and fronted Election Reporting Scotland on BBC Scotland during the 2017 Election. He also writes a weekly column in The Scotsman newspaper and contributes to the Daily Record. In February 2019 he was named as the presenter of the new flagship Debate Night current affairs series on BBC Scotland where politicians and public figures answer questions from members of the public.