Broadcasting veteran Jackie Bird has said she is “thrilled” and “absolutely honoured” to be made an MBE.
The journalist, who was the face of BBC Scotland News for three decades, is being recognised for her services to broadcasting and charities.
The 62-year-old has been presenting BBC Scotland’s Children In Need show for years and has been the president of the National Trust for Scotland since 2019.
She said protecting Scotland’s heritage and wild places is a “subject close to my heart”.
She was a regular on TV screens across the country as a presenter on Reporting Scotland until she stepped down in 2019.
For years, she brought in the bells with Scots as she presented the Hogmanay programme.
Reacting to her own new year honour, Ms Bird told the PA news agency she did not think she was “the sort of person” to get such an award.
The broadcaster, who was born in Bellshill in North Lanarkshire and grew up in a working-class community in Hamilton, described being made an MBE as “an absolute honour” and said she was excited to bring her 80-year-old parents to Buckingham Palace.
“I’m thrilled,” she said, “absolutely surprised and thrilled. My first thought was, ‘I can take my mum and dad to Buckingham Palace’.”
She said she did not know she had been nominated for the award until she received a letter from the UK Government.
“You get a letter and it says it’s from the Cabinet Office,” she said. “And you think, ‘Cabinet Office, what have I done wrong?’
“And then you open it and you think, ‘Wow’.”
The journalist described the honour as “an award from your country” and said “it doesn’t get much better than that”.
She added: “I don’t have a great privileged upbringing or anything like that. I was born and brought up in a council house, my father a janitor, my mother worked in an old persons’ home.
“So I’m not the sort of person that I would have expected to get something like this.
“It’s just an absolute honour.”
She added: “Hogmanay is a time that’s particularly close to my heart, so that’s a nice Hogmanay surprise, a nice Happy New Year gift.”
