1. Alastair James Stewart OBE was born on 22 June 1952 and is a retired English journalist and newscaster.
36 Facts About Alastair Stewart
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Alastair Stewart remained in this role for more than 35 years, making him the longest-serving male newsreader on British television, having worked in both local and national news for 44 years.
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Alastair Stewart was born in Emsworth, Hampshire to a Scottish father from Invergarry and an English mother.
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Alastair Stewart's father served as an officer in the Royal Air Force.
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Alastair Stewart then read Economics and Politics at the University of Bristol, and worked for the National Union of Students from 1974 to 1976.
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Alastair Stewart was a reporter, industrial correspondent, presenter and documentary maker.
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Alastair Stewart recorded one of the last interviews with Lord Mountbatten before Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, and spent six weeks in Ford Open Prison to make a half-hour documentary.
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Alastair Stewart joined ITN in 1980 as industrial correspondent, soon joining its roster of additional newsreaders.
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Alastair Stewart provided live coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster as the details of the tragedy unfolded.
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Alastair Stewart anchored, with Sandy Gall, the award-winning coverage on ITN on the night of the bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie and presented the ITV network coverage of the memorial service for the victims.
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Alastair Stewart moved again in May 1989, to ITN's flagship News at Ten bulletin, which he anchored live from the fall of the Berlin Wall, before spending a year in the United States as ITN's Washington correspondent.
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Alastair Stewart presented News at Ten, live from Saudi Arabia for two months.
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Alastair Stewart presented News at Ten from Kuwait for a week before returning to the UK.
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Alastair Stewart has presented Alastair Stewart's Sunday for BBC Radio 5 in 1994.
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Alastair Stewart was more than three times the legal limit when his car crashed in Hampshire.
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Alastair Stewart was a regular presence in ITV's national election coverage, co-anchoring network coverage of the general elections of 2005,1997,1992 and 1987.
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Alastair Stewart was the main anchor of Election Night Live: America Decides, ITV's through-the-night programme covering the 2008 US Presidential election.
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The bulletin was revamped in July 2009, from which point Alastair Stewart became one of two main alternate newscasters for the programme.
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Alastair Stewart was the main presenter of ITV's general election results programme in 2010.
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Alastair Stewart is a fan of the band The Rolling Stones, winning Celebrity Mastermind on 29 December 2009 with the band as his specialist subject.
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On 15 April 2010, Alastair Stewart moderated the first ever United Kingdom political leaders' debates between the prime ministerial candidates in the 2010 general election, featuring the Labour incumbent Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, debating on live television.
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Alastair Stewart received honorary doctorates from the University of Plymouth in September 2010, from the University of Winchester in 2011, and from the University of Sunderland in 2012.
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On 28 December 2014, Alastair Stewart presented a one-off ITV documentary called Unbelievable Moments: Caught on Camera.
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In 2015, Alastair Stewart made his West End theatrical debut in An Evening with Lucian Freud by Laura-Jane Foley.
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Alastair Stewart played a hapless interviewer appearing on video alongside Cressida Bonas, Russell Grant and Maureen Lipman.
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Alastair Stewart has appeared on the programme as a relief newscaster, alongside his duties on the ITV Lunchtime News.
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Alastair Stewart presented ITV News coverage of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.
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Alastair Stewart appeared on Celebrity Mastermind for the second time in December 2019, answering questions on Lewis Hamilton.
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In early January 2020, Alastair Stewart engaged in a dispute on Twitter with Martin Shapland, a black man.
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On 29 January 2020, Alastair Stewart deleted his Twitter account and announced he would be stepping down as an ITV News presenter.
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Later in 2020, Alastair Stewart worked as a relief presenter for Talkradio.
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Alastair Stewart has been married to Sally Ann Jung since 1978 and has four children.
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Alastair Stewart had the original 30-month ban reduced after he agreed to go on a rehabilitation course for disqualified drivers.
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In September 2023, Alastair Stewart announced during an interview on GB News that he had been diagnosed with early-onset vascular dementia after suffering a "series of strokes" and began to feel "discombobulated" when [undertaking] simple tasks around the house.
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Alastair Stewart has appeared twice on the celebrity editions of game show The Chase.
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Alastair Stewart's second appearance was a Text Santa special on 20 December 2013 and featured his fellow ITV News presenters Romilly Weeks, Matt Barbet, and Charlene White.