Alastair Stewart: News veteran with 40-year career in front of the camera
The broadcaster joined ITN in 1980 as industrial correspondent.
Broadcasting giant Alastair Stewart’s decision to step down from presenting duties comes after a 40-year career in front of the camera.
Stewart, 67, was born on June 22 1952 in Gosport, Hampshire, to parents who both served in the Royal Air Force.
He attended the state Madras College in Fife, Scotland, before moving to the independent Salesian College in Hampshire, then St Augustine’s Abbey School in Ramsgate, Kent.
Stewart studied economics and politics at University of Bristol before going on to work for the National Union Of Students between 1974 and 1976.
His first steps into television came when he joined Southern Television in Southampton as a reporter and presenter.
Stewart was one of the last to interview Lord Louis Mountbatten before he was murdered by the IRA in 1979.
He joined ITN in 1980 as industrial correspondent – and the broadcaster would become his professional home.
Soon after he was invited to join the roster of additional newsreaders and, from 1983 to 1986, he was a presenter and reporter with ITN’s Channel 4 News.
In 1989 he moved to ITV’s News At Ten where he became the lead presenter on the flagship show’s major news bulletins.
Until his departure from the broadcaster Stewart’s portfolio of work saw him move between the lunchtime, evening and 10pm shows while presenting special programmes.
He married Sally Ann Jung in 1978 and has four children.
Stewart famously kept his cool in August 2017 as a toddler took over his live news broadcast.
He was conducting a segment about milk allergies on the ITV Lunchtime News with a mother and her young son and daughter, when the little girl got up and ran around the desk.
She then climbed up on the desk in front of Stewart, often creeping into his shot, for the remainder of the piece.
As the toddler got up to run around, Stewart said that she “will do whatever she chooses to do for the next couple of minutes”, before continuing with the interview.
Having stifled laughter while continuing the broadcast, the veteran newscaster joked at the end of the segment: “Mary Nightingale, I think, will have a more peaceful time at 6.30.
“From all of us, a very good afternoon to you.”
A fan of rock music, Stewart won Celebrity Mastermind in December 2009 with The Rolling Stones as his specialist subject.
He briefly appeared in the West End in a 2015 production An Evening With Lucian Freud by Laura-Jane Foley.
He played a hapless interviewer appearing on video alongside Cressida Bonas, Russell Grant and Maureen Lipman.
Stewart presented ITV News’ coverage of the European Union referendum in 2016.
