Stephanie Hirst

Stephanie Hirst is an English radio and television presenter on Hits Radio. She has hosted Hit40UK and the weekday breakfast show on Capital Yorkshire Hirsty's Daily Dose.

Career
Hirst started her career at 96.3 Radio Aire in Leeds as a helper making tea for DJs, before joining the overnight show at age 16. She moved to Minster FM in York, then to The Pulse of West Yorkshire in Bradford in 1995 to present the evening show. In 1997 she moved to Hallam FM in Sheffield, her local station, where she hosted the drivetime programme for three years. She then returned to The Pulse of West Yorkshire to co-host the breakfast show with Elisa Hilton, but quickly left to take over the breakfast show at Viking FM in Hull after the departure of JK and Joel. Hirst left Viking FM, to present Hirsty's Daily Dose) at Galaxy Yorkshire, a station covering all areas of Yorkshire.

After Neil Fox quit as the host of Hit40UK in 2004, Hirst – one of Fox's stand-ins previously from 2003 – was recruited, initially with Katy Hill, to host the programme each Sunday from the studios of Capital Radio in London and went on to host the programme alone. Hirst presented her last Hit40UK chart on 15 October 2006.

In May 2013, Hirst returned to presenting nationally on Gold on Saturday afternoons where she created a show called 'Vinyl Heaven', with every song played live from the original vinyl copies.

In June 2014, Hirst left her presenting roles at Capital and Gold. In April 2018, she began hosting The Stephanie Hirst Show, broadcast on BBC Radio Leeds.

She made a return to commercial radio for Bauer's Hits Radio Pride. She hosted her first 'Belters' show on 28 August 2020. She then joined the national Hits Radio network in August 2021 to host 'Stephanie Hirst's Belters'.

She is also a trustee of The Radio Academy and can be seen on Channel 5 as a occasional panelist on Jeremy Vine.

Transition and activism
Hirst came out publicly as a woman and talked about her gender transition on 11 October 2014 during an interview with Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live. In 2014 and 2015, Hirst was included in The Independent On Sunday's "Rainbow List", an annual celebration of 101 LGBT people in the UK.

In July 2016, Hirst was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Leeds Beckett University for her LGBT activism.

In 2016 she was nominated for the Top 10 LGBT+ Celebrity Rising Stars award by the British LGBT Awards.