Louise Botting

Elizabeth Louise Young was born in Liverpool on 19 September 1939, days after Britain entered the Second World War. Her mother, Edith Young, was a teacher and her father, Bobby Young, was an insurance broker. During the war the family was evacuated from Merseyside to North Wales, and they eventually settled in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands. Her brother, John, went on to play rugby for England. She lost her father while she was still a teenager.

She attended Sutton Coldfield High School for Girls, now Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, and then won a place at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1961.

After graduating in 1961 she joined the merchant bank Kleinwort Benson as one of its first female analysts, at a time when women in the City were so rare that the bank reportedly had to build her a women's toilet. After a career break to raise her daughters, she moved into journalism in the early 1970s at the Daily Mail, writing for the Money Mail pages on mortgages, household budgets and investments. She also broadcast for the British Forces Broadcasting Service from 1971 to 1981.

In 1974 she co-founded the wealth management firm Douglas Deakin Young with George Douglas and John Deakin, serving as managing director until 1982 and then as chairman until the firm was sold to Duncan Lawrie in 2005, after which she worked as a consultant.

In 1977 she became the founding presenter of BBC Radio 4's Money Box and presented its first edition. The programme aimed to give ordinary people sensible advice on tax, savings, investment, pensions and social security. Its audience grew to as many as three million listeners a week, and it became influential enough that Downing Street was said to want to know its content in advance. She presented it for fifteen years, until 1992.

In 1992 she left the BBC to join the board of London Weekend Television, after the corporation judged that holding both roles would be a conflict of interest. She went on to become a non-executive director of General Accident (later CGNU and now Aviva), making her one of the first women on the board of a FTSE 100 company. She also served as a director of Trinity Mirror and of Camelot Group, the National Lottery operator. She sat on the Top Salaries Review Body from 1987 to 1994. In local radio she held several stakes and in 1995 chaired the consortium that won the Stratford-upon-Avon licence, launched in 1996 as The Bear. She was also a professional pension trustee for Channel 4, Blackwell Publishing, W H Smith and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

She married the writer, explorer and broadcaster Douglas Botting, and they had two daughters: Anna Botting, the Sky News presenter, and Kate Botting, a writer and television producer. The marriage ended in divorce in 1985 after 21 years. She later married Les Carpenter, the publishing executive and former chief executive of Reed International. Anna recalled that her mother only used her famous radio voice at home when the girls were really in trouble. Although an expert on money, she described herself as uneasy with cash machines and preferred to pay by credit card.

Her broadcasting rested on the conviction that clear, sensible financial advice should be available to everyone, not only the wealthy. She championed everyday domestic finance, explaining mortgages, pensions, tax and savings in plain language. She also supported anti-poverty work as a patron of the charity APT Action on Poverty.

Money Box, which she launched in 1977, is still broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and is now presented by Paul Lewis, who called her the programme's pioneer first presenter. She is remembered as a trailblazer for women in banking, broadcasting and the boardroom, and as the voice that made personal finance accessible to millions of British listeners.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1993, under Prime Minister John Major, for services to journalism.

With fellow Money Box broadcaster Vincent Duggleby she wrote Making the Most of Your Money (Orbis, 1984, revised 1985). Money Box used Pink Floyd's song Money as its theme tune. After her death, Money Box broadcast a tribute on 10 October 2026 featuring archive voices including Vincent Duggleby and John Major, and obituaries appeared in The Times, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Louise Botting died after a short illness on 22 September 2026, aged 87, three days after her birthday. Her daughter Anna announced the death on 5 October 2026. The place of death and the specific cause have not been made public.