Lesley Riddoch

Lesley Riddoch is one of Scotland’s best known commentators and broadcasters and she’s played an active part in supporting many community campaigns. She has held many influential positions including assistant editor of The Scotsman and contributing editor of The Sunday Herald but is perhaps best known for her broadcasting with programmes on Radio 4, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio Scotland, for which she has won two Sony speech broadcaster awards (2002, 2003) Since 2004 Lesley has run her own independent radio and podcast company, Feisty Ltd, which produced several series from studios in Dundee including a weekly topical phone-in programme for BBC Radio Scotland. She is currently a weekly columnist for the ‘Scotsman’ and the Sunday Post and a regular contributor to the Guardian’s Comment is Free and has her own blog. She was on the short-list for the 2006 Orwell prize.

Lesley was a member of the 2008 Scottish Government’s Prisons Commission, charged with finding out why Scotland imprisons almost twice as many people as Ireland and Norway. She was a founding member of the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust which led to the successful community buyout in 1997, and Chaired a Task Force on Rum in 2008 to transfer control of assets from Scottish Natural Heritage to the local community.

Lesley was founder and editor of Africawoman, an online newspaper written by 100 African women journalists which distributed free papers on buses and trains before the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 and founded the feminist magazine Harpies and Quines which survived legal challenge by Harpers and Queen before closing in 1994. Before the 2007 Scottish election Lesley co-founded Scottish Votepods, ten big hustings events which combined political debate with music and stand-up comedy. Film and audio highlights were uploaded to itunes and youtube creating a virtual audience roughly 20 times the actual audience (though these averaged a feisty 200 which was pretty good!)

Lesley Riddoch wrote ‘Riddoch; on the Outer Hebrides’ about the challenge facing traditional Hebridean society - published in 2007 by Luath. Feisty was part of a three year EU marine energy project, Equimar which ended in 2011 She has begun a PhD at Strathclyde and Oslo Universities comparing the cabin traditions and outdoor life of Norway and Scotland and spent two months living in Oslo during 2011 thanks to a Norwegian-government funded research grant. In 2010 Lesley set up the policy group Nordic Horizons whose aim is to bring policy experts, politicians, practitioners and academics over from the Nordic nations to engage with their MSPs, civil servants, policy makers and interested members of the public in Scotland. The aim is to debate, share experience and learn more about Scotland’s closest eastern neighbours. She’s currently writing a book about the Nordic nations, The Viking Feminists. All Feisty programmes and regular newspaper columns are podcast on her website.