How Kirsty fell for lowly ‘hotel porter’
TELEVISION presenter Kirsty Young has revealed it was love at first sight when she saw her husband – even though she thought he was a hotel porter.
The Scot met a shabbilydressed entrepreneur Nick Jones as he carried luggage and introduced her to the remote lodgings where she was staying with her sister. But little did she know that he actually owned the establishment – where the couple would later marry.
Former news anchor Young, 47, who hosts BBC1’s Crimewatch, explained: ‘I met Nick when he had a restaurant and he was opening his first little hotel.
‘I went with my sister to stay at this beautiful little hotel in the middle of nowhere.
‘He carried our bags and was helping us. He’s got this terribly nice English accent, and I thought: “I wonder what happened to a guy like that... he’s so well-educated and yet he’s a porter in a hotel.”
‘He was wearing these crap tangerine shorts and his shoes had a hole in the bottom. I thought: “Poor guy!”.’
Later, as the three chatted over lunch, she realised fatherof-two Mr Jones helped ‘run the place’. She added: ‘I fell in love with him that night. It sounds ridiculous.’
The pair’s encounter was at Babington House in Somerset, where they married in September 1999 and which has hosted several other celebrity weddings. Miss Young, who is the host of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, was interviewed by comedian John Bishop for his new series In Conversation with... to be broadcast on the Sky TV channel W.
East Kilbride-born broadcaster Miss Young, who has now lived in England for 20 years, added: ‘It amazes me that I’m married to an Englishman and have Englishspeaking children, because I feel so Scottish – it’s the very core of who I am.’