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Moira Stuart
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Moira Clare Ruby Stuart OBE (born 2 September 1949) is a British journalist who was the first African-Caribbean female newsreader on British television. She presented many television news, and radio programmes for the BBC, but she is now pursuing other projects.
rt began working with the BBC in the 1970s. She was a continuity announcer and newsreader for both BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2, and in 1980 she played Darong in series one of game show The Adventure Game.
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Encyclopedia
Moira Clare Ruby Stuart OBE (born 2 September 1949) is a British journalist who was the first African-Caribbean female newsreader on British television. She presented many television news, and radio programmes for the BBC, but she is now pursuing other projects.
Career
Early career
Stuart began working with the BBC in the 1970s. She was a continuity announcer and newsreader for both BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2, and in 1980 she played Darong in series one of game show The Adventure Game. She moved to television in 1981.
TV News career
Since 27 August 1981, Stuart has presented every news bulletin devised on BBC television apart from the Ten O'Clock News. She has also appeared on The News Quiz and presented the news on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme each Sunday, continuing to present its successor programme Sunday AM with Andrew Marr.
Until a change in the format of BBC Breakfast she presented the first half-hour of the programme, three days a week, followed by short half-hourly round-ups throughout the rest of the three-hour-long show. BBC Breakfast moved to a new studio with a new look on 2 May 2006, and the entire news content is now presented by the two main presenters. Until comparatively recently Stuart retained her slot on BBC's Sunday AM show. She continued to present some weekend television bulletins on BBC One. She also worked on other long-form programmes for other BBC channels, including BBC Four.
On 27 March 2007, BBC News announced that Stuart would no longer be presenting the bulletins for Sunday AM. This meant she no longer had a regular slot on broadcast TV. The BBC declined to comment on why she was no longer being used, although rumours circulated within the BBC and commercial newsrooms that Stuart was taken from all future bulletins because she was considered now "too old", at 57, although Anna Ford continued anchoring the BBC One O'Clock News until her retirement at 62.
Her 34-year career with BBC News was brought to a close on 3 October 2007 when the BBC announced her departure.
Other projects
A keen music lover, Stuart has deputised for Humphrey Lyttelton on his BBC Radio 2 Best of Jazz programme, participated in the British Jazz Awards as compère, and featured as a narrator on a jazz-rap album by Soweto Kinch.
With Adam Shaw, she also presents the BBC Two personal finance series Cashing In.
Stuart has served on various boards and judging panels including Amnesty International, The Royal Television Society, United Nations Association, the London Fair Play Consortium and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission.
In 2004, Stuart was the subject in one episode of the BBC documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are? which helped trace back her family history.
In 2006, Stuart played a hyper-realised version of herself in the Ricky Gervais comedy Extras, supposedly involved in supplying drugs to Ronnie Corbett.
In March 2007 she also presented the documentary In Search of Wilberforce for BBC Television, examining the role of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the British bill that banned the slave trade.
On 2 June 2007, she hosted the BBC One topical news quiz show, Have I Got News for You, and was well received by the public. The extended and uncut version of which (shown the following evening, 3 June 2007), revealed that, while making a spoof appeal for work, she fluffed her lines on a number of occasions but took it all with her traditional good humour.
On 16 November 2007, she visited Mill Hill School in Ripley, Derbyshire to officially open the new school building alongside Councillor Alan Charles from Derbyshire County Council.
In 2008 and 2009, she appeared in a series of adverts for HMRC promoting tax return procedures.
Personal life
She is unmarried, though she has said that on two occasions she almost got married. Desmond Lynam has said that she has been a girlfriend of his. She has also received other advances, one memorably by John Humphrys at the end of the Six O'Clock News. "You're the most sensationally sexy lady I know. The best thing we can do for the next few hours is to make mad passionate love in the basement." This was caught by the sub-titles although the microphone was off.
In 2001 Stuart was awarded an OBE and in the EMMA Awards named "Media Personality of 2002".
Early life
Moira Stuart was born in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, London on 2 September 1949 to African-Caribbean parents.
Family
Stuart's mother, Marjorie Gordon (born 1921), and her father, Harold Stuart (1914–66), divorced when she was ten months old. Talking about her ancestry, Stuart says she is from a "long line of outsiders" and that she considers herself "a true mongrel — and proud of it". In Who Do You Think You Are?, she travelled up to the Scottish Highlands, as well as to Antigua and to Dominica, where her great-grandfather George James Christian was born. During the programme, Stuart discovered the story of how her grandfather, Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon, met his wife Clara Christian while both were studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While her grandfather completed his degree and qualified in 1918, Stuart's grandmother did not finish her studies, using money intended to pay for her course to pay their bills instead. In the programme, Stuart also discovered her family's past links to slavery.
Awards and achievements
- 1988 voted "Best Newscaster of the Year" (1988) by the TV and Radio Industries Club Awards
- 1989 voted "Best Television Personality" by the Women of Achievement Awards
- 1994 named "Best Female Television Personality" by the Black Journalists' Association
- 1997 named "Best Media Personality" by The Voice newspaper
- 2001 awarded as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to broadcasting in the Queen's Birthday Honours
- 2006 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, the University where her grandparents met.
- 2008 named 'Oldie Autocutie of the Year' for her outstanding contribution to television by The Oldie Magazine.
The Moira Stewart Cup
The Moira Stewart Cupis competed for annually in the United Hospitals Revue of the University of London Medical Schools. The current holders are GKT School of Medicine.
The cup is not officially endorsed by Moira Stuart herself.
Previous Holders:
See also
External links
- (100 Great Black Britons) (NB: this source mis-spells Stuart's surname as Stewart)
- (BBC)
- (BBC)
- (tv.com)
- (BBC)
- (Scotsman)
- (www.ed.ac.uk)
- (www.cpa.ed.ac.uk)
- (The Guardian)
- (The Independent)
- (The Guardian)
- (The Times)
- (Knight Ayton)
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