The Sunday Times Magazine • 11for a significant amount of time and get rid
of all the potential stress factors, you may as
well not do the other bit of the treatment.”
It was a “sobering moment”, Young says.
She knew she couldn’t continue with the
degree of daily pain — she was, she says,
falling apart. The decision was “immediate”.
Desert Island Discs has been going strong
for 80 years. “The people, we come and
go. The programme is the thing,” Young
says. “Even though it felt like a big decision
for me, it wasn’t a big decision for the
programme.” But she once said she’d still
be doing the programme when she was 85.
“Did I? Not long now then,” she says,
breaking into a smile, before adding: “It’s
not a big deal, is it? The world still turns,
the programme still exists.”
She says all this matter-of-factly but her
eyes betray her. She is tearing up. “On a tiny
personal level, it felt like a big deal because
I’d loved it. It’s the most interesting job I’ve
ever had. It was hard to walk away from it
but it was clearly the only option.”
She started seeing her doctor every three
weeks and he devised a treatment for her
involving “quite a complex cocktail” of
medication, some of which alters the brain
chemistry. “It’s the difference between
going into M&S and picking up a suit and
hoping it fits you, and going to Savile Row
and somebody making me up a bespoke
suit,” she says. “I was in an ideal position to
try to fix a thing that had floored me.” She
knows that she is fortunate to be able to pay
for private healthcare and “to have friends
who are medics who did some work to find
out who’s ‘the guy’”. She was told that
NHS patients can wait 18 months to see
a specialist and then see a rheumatologist
just once. “I don’t know how people deal
with it. Well, I know what they do. They
shovel useless painkillers down their neck
and they cry in the loo on their tea break.”
Many fibromyalgia sufferers spiral into
depression. Did she feel depressed? “Yeah,
I definitely did. I’m not a medic, I don’t
know the difference between low mood and
depression, but I remember talking to my
specialist about that. He said, ‘Well, of
course, if you’re dealing with a chronic pain
disorder, that’s absolutely a symptom.’ ”
Young’s resignation led to “a complete
reframing of life. I’d always worked, it was
central to all the things I did. My ambition
totally deserted me. I started to read
novels, I spent loads more time with my
kids, loads more conversations, time
around the kitchen table, in a beautiful
garden. I reconnected with the world.”
By the time the pandemic arrived, she
had already been living “a really small life”
for a year and a half at the family home in
Oxfordshire, so “for me it wasn’t a shock.
I was, like, ‘Welcome to my world of apparent
nothingness.’ Well, not nothingness
because I was deeply in my family life.
We naffed each other off a fair proportion
of the time, but it was nice to be around.”How is she feeling now? “I’m off most of
my medications but that’s four years, that’s
how long it’s taken, and I did all the things
that I was told to. I’m an absolute boring
nut about my gut biome now. I could bore
the knickers off you on that.” As well as
nurturing the good bacteria in her gut,
therapeutic yoga and meditation — “things
that before I would have discounted” —
helped reduce her reliance on medication.
“My specialist was all for that,” she says.
“And, of course, it makes total sense that
everything that’s going on here” — she
points to her head — “affects everything
else. Once I had time off work, I had time
to really do all that stuff.”
Thinking back now to that period when
she couldn’t make it up the stairs without
stopping, “it’s almost like a bad dream”.
“I didn’t know if I’d do anything ever
again,” she says, but the chance to host
the jubilee coverage persuaded her. “It’s a
unique moment. We’ll never see it again,
certainly in our lifetimes and maybe never,
so I couldn’t resist.” Right now she is in thethick of pre-production, feeling the weight
of responsibility. “I feel like somebody who
hasn’t even done the school run in four
years and somebody said, ‘Do you just
want to pop into this Formula One car and
do a round of Brands Hatch?’ But I hope
the motor skills will come back.”
Is this Young’s great comeback or is
she just dipping a toe in the water? “It’s a
beautifully self-contained thing,” she says.
“I’m going to see what it feels like. It’s not
like I’m committing to a two-year contract.
I’ll see if I make a good enough job of it
and what other people think.”
I ask Young for details of the planned
jubilee coverage. “I haven’t signed the
Official Secrets Act,” she teases, but she’s
staying schtum on the finer points. What she
can tell me sounds daunting: four days of live
broadcasts including the lighting of beacons
across Britain and the Commonwealth,
a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, a party at
Buckingham Palace, interviews with some
of the world’s biggest entertainers and a lot
of intricate pageantry. It sounds like quite
a bit more than dipping a toe in the water.
She will also need contingency plans
should the Queen not make it to any of the
events. And what of Prince Andrew? “If he
doesn’t turn up, that’s interesting,” she says.
“If he does turn up, that’s interesting.
We know he’s not going to be on the
balcony after Trooping the Colour. I didn’t
think we’d hear that from the Palace before
— that was a strong call on their part.
Good on them for being so decisive —
they’ve made a smart decision.”
She also understands the decision to
exclude the Duke and Duchess of Sussex
from the balcony. “If you stop working
for a company, you don’t get to use the
company car any more,” she says wryly.
Harry and Meghan had their first date
at Dean Street Townhouse, part of Nick“I PICKED UP
A BOTTLE OF
WATER, IT WAS
TOO HEAVY
FOR ME AND
SMASHED ON
THE GROUND.
I FELT PATHETIC”
Young, second right, meets the Queen in 1998 with, from
second left, the actress Lisa Riley, the landmines expert Lindsay
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