Biography
Wark was born in Dumfries to Jimmy Wark, a solicitor, and Roberta Wark, a schoolteacher. Wark was educated at Kilmarnock Grammar Primary and subsequently Ayr's independent Wellington School. After studying history at the University of Edinburgh, Wark joined the BBC in 1976 as a researcher for BBC Radio Scotland and, in 1982, moved to television. She produced BBC Scotland's lunchtime political programme Agenda and eventually became a BBC television presenter, including a presenter of Breakfast Time. In 1988 she was one of the first reporters to cover the Lockerbie disaster. In 1990, Wark demonstrated her distinctive line of questioning in an interview with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Wark was a presenter on BBC2 arts programme The Late Show (from 1990-3) and the heritage programme One Foot in the Past.
She has presented Newsnight since 1993. She married the television producer Alan Clements (born c. 1961) in September 1989 after meeting on the BBC Scotland programme Left, Right, and Centre. They have a daughter (born 1990) and a son (born 1992). They founded independent TV production company Wark-Clements in 1990, which in May 2004 was merged with fellow Scots broadcaster Muriel Gray's Ideal World to form IWC Media. In December 2005, Wark and Gray severed their connections with IWC Media after RDF Media bought the company.
Wark hosted the 10th annual Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards on Friday November 30, 2007 for STV.
She replaced David Baddiel as host of the BBC Four programme The Book Quiz in 2008 and hosts a BBC Two quiz show, A Question of Genius, which started in March 2009. In 2011 she was chosen to host a BBC food quiz show entitled A Question of Taste, pitting two teams of food fanatics against one another.
In June 2006 she interviewed Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. She made a cameo appearance in the Doctor Who TV series in the 2008 episode The Poison Sky. In 2006, she presented a series of programmes on BBC television about countries on the continent entitled "Tales from Old Europe".
Wark participated in the 2011 series of Celebrity MasterChef where she reached the final and narrowly lost out to Phil Vickery. On January 1, 2012, Wark will appear in a cameo role as herself in the revival of the BBC's Absolutely Fabulous.
Read more about this topic: Kirsty Wark
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“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
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