Shes the daughter of one of the most well-known and revered Scots ever to grace the small screen.
So perhaps, as she prepares to exit from a brilliant career in front of the cameras, it is little surprise she is talking again about her dad – former Mastermind host Magnus Magnusson.
To say Sally Magnusson has successfully emerged from the not inconsiderable shadow cast by her beloved father – who died in 2007 – is somewhat remarkable...
But over a 43-year broadcasting career she has become as much of a household name as her dad by becoming the face of BBC news in Scotland and a professional, safe pair of hands in the fickle world of TV news.
But, days before her final appearance on Reporting Scotland, Sally recalls how being the daughter of a TV giant was not always plain sailing - and how it was her mother who was a true inspiration as a pioneering female journalist.
She revealed that when she was growing up, she was deeply embarrassed to be the daughter of the first and most famous host of TV quiz show Mastermind, a role he held from 1972 until 1997.
As a schoolgirl in Glasgow, Sally would cringe when he was stopped by fans.
‘I was at the age when you just want your parents to be invisible,’ she told the Mail on Sunday. ‘I would walk behind him in the street, pretending not to know him.’
Sally Magnusson has had a 43-year broadcasting career and is a household name after becoming the face of BBC news in Scotland.
Being the daughter of a TV giant took its toll while she was at university, but she soon emerged from out of her fathers shadow to forge her own path.
Later, at university, she got so sick of other students parroting her quizmaster father’s catchphrase ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ and the contestants’ cry of ‘Pass!’ that she hid her identity.
‘Inevitably, when they heard my name, they would ask if I was any relation and I would have to confess I was and that’s when the comments would come. Sometimes, when I couldn’t be bothered with it all, I would introduce myself as Sally Brown.’
It was her mother who cured her of her embarrassment.
‘There was a day when I was trailing several steps behind my father and I could see people recognising him and going up to him and my mother said, “Are you ashamed of him?” And I said “no” and she said, “Then don’t act as if you are.”
‘I took it to heart and the joke is that now I walk down the road and people look at me and it’s not nearly as embarrassing.’
There’s no doubt that as one of the most familiar faces on our screens, she will continue to be recognised long after she steps down from presenting BBC Reporting Scotland after 27 years.
As she prepares to leave behind the newsroom at BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow, she reveals that it was her father who encouraged her to embark on a career in broadcasting that has lasted more than 40 years.
‘I applied for the BBC graduate traineeship when I left university but I didn’t get in and hated being in front of the board.’
Instead, she became a trainee journalist with The Scotsman in 1979 and went on to work at the Sunday Standard; she was awarded Scottish Feature Writer of the Year in 1982.
‘I was approached by STV to do a documentary based on an article I’d written about assisted dying. I had absolutely no thoughts of television in my head as I was enjoying my newspaper life.’
‘I called Dad for advice and told him “I don’t think I’ll do it as I don’t know if I’ll be any good on television”. He said it would add another string to my bow and suggested I might even enjoy it. On the strength of that, I agreed to do the documentary.
‘When I got into the television studio for the first time, I felt comfortable. I instinctively knew how to talk to people through the camera.’
Although her father encouraged her to take that first step, it is mother, Mamie Baird, that Sally credits as her inspiration.
‘She was working in the 1950s as a female journalist at The Daily Express. She had to leave work when she got married, as women did then, but the editor begged her to keep writing for the paper as a freelance. My father stepped into her shoes as chief feature writer and always joked that he only married her to get her job.’
Sally’s television career began with BBC Scotland’s weekly TV topical programme, Current Account, before she moved to London to present Sixty Minutes, and later BBC London Plus and BBC One’s Breakfast Time alongside Frank Bough, Jeremy Paxman, and Peter Snow.
In 1996 she won a Scottish Bafta as part of the team covering the Dunblane tragedy – one of the hardest assignments in a lengthy career.
‘Doing the commentary was agony. Some of my children were the same age as the Dunblane children,’ said Sally, who has five children with TV director husband Norman Stone.
In 1998, she was awarded a Royal Television Society award for her exclusive interview with Earl Spencer in Diana: My Sister the Princess.
‘I have hardly any memory of that interview as I had broken my collarbone showing off to my children on a mountain bike and was on strong painkillers,’ she said.
In 1998, she returned to Glasgow to present BBC Reporting Scotland, commenting on the opening of the Scottish Parliament and on King Charles receiving the Honours of Scotland in a broadcast that won an RTS Scotland award for the year’s best live event.
‘It’s a real privilege to be at these big moments, watching history being made,’ said Sally, who also led the BBC’s live commentary of the late Queen Elizabeth lying at rest in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh while King Charles stood vigil with his siblings.
It is her calm and natural delivery that makes Sally Magnusson so relatable to viewers – even when there are technical hitches.
‘I think you have to inhabit the studio rather than simply read from an autocue. If there’s a problem, you take the viewer into your confidence. It’s better to say I’m really sorry, something has gone wrong, than look shifty and nervous.’
She has also presented numerous current affairs documentaries. Her 2024 BBC documentary Sally Magnusson: Alzheimer’s, a Cure and Me, investigated developments in the understanding of dementia.
She has been campaigning for its sufferers since her mother’s battle with the cruel disease and was awarded an MBE for her charity work in 2023.
The documentary saw her struggling with the decision to take a test that can predict whether she would succumb to dementia.
The test can detect if amyloid, a brain protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, is already present.
‘I talked about taking the test with my family. My four sons think I should go ahead and do it but my daughter burst in to tears. She is afraid that if we do find out that amyloid is lurking in my brain, knowing will affect our present, not just our future.
‘In the end, I decided that for the greater good and for research we need to test people like me with a family history of Alzheimer’s but no discernible symptoms. I’m now determined to do it this year,’ said Sally, who wrote a book about her mother’s dementia in 2014, Where Memories Go, and founded the charity Playlist for Life, which encourages access to meaningful music for people with dementia.
Later this year, Sally, who has five grandchildren, will celebrate her 70th birthday but she insists her age has nothing to do with her departure from Reporting Scotland.
‘I relish being an older woman in front of the cameras as a help to other women who can turn on their television and see a someone who looks like them. Things are better for older female presenters now. When I started in television, I was told that my career would end in my forties. After my friend Jill Dando died, I was offered her job presenting Crimewatch but was later told by an embarrassed executive that they needed someone younger. I was 44 at the time. It was unfair and I felt hurt.
‘I’m glad I’m still working and have been able to stop on my own terms. I’m sad to be leaving the newsroom, but I feel a zest for other things that I will have more time to concentrate on, such as book writing.’
The broadcaster was awarded an MBE for her charity work surrounding dementia in 2023.
A prolific author who has written a slew of non-fiction books, including a biography of Scots runner and missionary Eric Liddell, two children’s books, three novels and a fourth about to be published, she won’t be taking up gardening.
Instead, she will be spending more time in the writing shed at the bottom of her garden that she bought with the advance from her first novel.
Her fourth, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, was inspired by the Norse myths and set in Orkney, where it will be launched in November.
‘The Norse myths are due for an outing beyond the Marvel films,’ said Sally, whose novel features Hel, the queen of the underworld.
While her writing career, the demands of an expanding family, and her charity work beckon, Sally won’t be disappearing from our television screens.
‘I’ve had a wonderful career as a broadcast journalist and will miss the buzz of the newsroom, which has been part of my life for so long. It has been an honour and a privilege to be witness to so many historic events as they unfold.
‘But I won’t be giving up broadcasting entirely. I’m working on some ideas for documentaries for the BBC as a freelance. It’s true what they say – once a news journalist, always a news journalist.’