Former Desert Island Discs host Kirsty Young returned to the BBC Radio 4 show for the first time since she stepped away from the programme in 2018.

The 54-year-old hosted nearly 500 editions of the programme between 2006 and 2018 before having to leave to undergo treatment for fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis.

Appearing on a special edition of the castaway programme airing on Christmas Day, Young told Lauren Laverne, who took over her presenting role, that she is now feeling “so much better” and reflected on the experience of returning to broadcast after her break.

She explained that she had spent a year seeing specialists to work out what the nature of her condition was, before a professor of rheumatology eventually diagnosed her.

He had told her that she needed to reduce the stress in her life alongside the medical treatment if she wanted to get better.

Young said: “It was said with extreme kindness but it was just a moment of absolute reality and clarity, and I remember I pulled my car over and just had a good old, to use a good Scottish word, a good old greet (cry) and I thought ‘right, well, them’s the facts and you’re really going to have to think about this’.

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“I’m very aware in talking about this, people sit opposite physicians and get diagnoses that are much more serious than the one I got, but it’s a very painful thing and I was in pain and a chronic long-term pain condition is an absolute pain, literally and metaphorically, to deal with.

“It grinds you away, you lose your personality, you lose your sense of humour, you lose your sense of self. There’s all sorts of things that go with it. It’s awful. So I had to take it seriously if I was going to get better. So, I did.”

Young admitted that she felt “very shaky” having to leave her broadcast job, which she “absolutely loved” and had intended to do until they made her leave.

However, after taking a number of years out, she was able to return to present BBC coverage of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations earlier this year as well as the closing moments of the late monarch’s funeral at St George’s Chapel in Windsor.

The full interview with Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs will air on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds on Christmas Day at 11.15am.