It’s about being genuine, and approachable and accessible, not talking at people but with people

With a breakfast show, a weekly podcast, TV commitments and a young family, Edith Bowman is a blur of positivity. Life’s too short to be negative, she tells Janet Christie as she prepares to help The Ivy open in Edinburgh. Portrait by Debra Hurford Brown

Talk to Edith Bowman and you come away fizzing with ideas: films to see, music to listen to, books to read, all of it “brilliant,” “really, really good” or “really great” and her enthusiasm is as infectious as her throaty laugh. That’s why she’s best live, in the moment, spontaneous, on breakfast radio, fronting festivals, red carpeting film stars at premieres, recording her film music Soundtracking podcasts or hitting the decks Djing at the launch of Edinburgh’s newest eatery, The Ivy on the Square. “Live’s always really good because it’s really instant and can be reactive, whereas prerecorded stuff is a bit of a faff and just takes for ever. I did Isle of Wight [Festival] coverage for Sky Arts live for the first time this year. It’s ‘let’s do it, let’s go live’. It’s the excitement, adrenalin and the atmosphere which you create, I love doing that. I think that’s why I like doing the premieres as well, because it’s like live telly and there’s not enough of that out there.”

As well as loving spontaneity, she’s has a predilection to positivity. She doesn’t waste her time on “crap”.

“Sometimes people say ‘oh, you love everything, you always like it.’ And I say, ‘well, to be honest, I’d rather just not waste ten minutes on the radio saying something’s crap. Why not use that ten minutes to enthuse about something that’s good?’”

What’s good today is LCD Soundsystem’s latest album American Dream. “We just played it on the breakfast show and it was like ‘my God it feels like Christmas has come early’. She’s also loving reading Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, 2001-2011 by Lizzy Goodman, “totally my era,” Ali Land’s Good Me Bad Me is “fantastic,” and Emma Cline’s The Girls is “really really good.” And new songs from Arcade Fire and Everything Everything are recommended, plus David Lowery’s film, A Ghost Story – “the soundtrack is just exceptional,” she says.

When we talk it’s not even gone 11am and already she’s been on the go since dawn, presenting her breakfast show on Virgin Radio UK which airs every weekday from 6am-10am. After the show she generally has meetings, screenings and interviews then it’s off to pick up her kids Rudy, nine, and Spike, four, from school.

Born in Anstruther, Fife in 1974, Bowman left university in Edinburgh with a degree in Communications Studies at Queen Margaret College and work experience on local radio. From there she defied those who said her Fife accent would never get on the airwaves and went on to forge a career in broadcasting with radio shows on BBC Radio 1,2,5,6 and Scotland. Twenty years on, based in North London and married to indie rocker Tom Smith of Editors, she’s one of the networks’ go-to presenters as well as being music editor at Elle magazine and author