The presenter of a popular breakfast show on Capital FM Yorkshire has announced she is to undergo surgery to become a woman and has started calling herself Stephanie.

Stephanie Hirst, former known as Simon, announced in an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live last night that she is halfway through gender reassignment treatment. She has officially changed her name to Stephanie, in order to keep the same initials.

Hirst left Hirsty’s Daily Dose breakfast show in June. In the interview the 39-year-old said she had left to “focus on me, because I have devoted my whole life to radio.”

She told the Stephen Nolan programme: “I don’t have to hide anymore. I can be me. I am a woman and that’s it.”

Hirst also hosted the Hit40UK national commercial radio Top 40 chart between 2003 and 2006. Hirst spoke of the torment she had gone through carrying around the secret: “The thought was there in my head constantly…There were many times on the air in recent years where I nearly said that I'm transgender.

“I knew from around the same time that I knew I wanted to be on the radio that something wasn't right. I didn't feel complete, I didn't feel like it locked. I felt like a square peg in a round hole but I didn't know why and I couldn't work it out.”