Career
Bird was 17 when she started work for District of Columbia Thomson in Dundee working on teenage magazines and eventually became the popular editor at Jackie magazine. Subsequently she worked as a broadcast journalist on Radio Clyde’s news team and then as a print journalist on the Glasgow Evening Times. After working as a reporter for The Sun newspaper, Bird joined Television South in Maidstone as a reporter and presenter for the South East edition of regional news programme Coast to Coast.
Bird left TVS to join British Broadcasting Corporation Scotland, making her debut as a main presenter of Reporting Scotland on Monday 16 October 1989.
She currently shares the role as a sole anchor with veteran broadcaster Sally Magnusson. Alongside Reporting Scotland, she has also been a main presenter of key British Broadcasting Corporation Scotland event programming, including Hogmanay Live and the Scottish Children in Need opt-outs.
She is also a newspaper columnist and has written and produced comedy series The Lewis Lectures and Having it All for British Broadcasting Corporation Radio Scotland. On 13 June 2012, Bird was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (Doctor of Letters) in a graduation ceremony at the University of Glasgow.
In October 2014 Bird celebrated 25 years of working on Reporting Scotland.
She is the longest running newsreader on the programme.
