Moira Stuart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moira Stuart OBE (born 1952) was the first Afro-Caribbean female newsreader on British television. She has presented many television news, and radio programmes for the BBC. At present she has no regular news slot, although Moira still works for the BBC. The reason she no longer presents the news on Sunday AM is as yet unknown.^[1]

1 Early life and career
2 TV news career
3 Other projects
4 Personal life
5 Awards and achievements
6 References
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Moira Stuart was born in Britain in 1952^[2] to Afro-Caribbean parents. Her mother, Marjorie Gordon (born 1921) and her father, Harold Stuart (1914-1966) 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". ^[2]

Stuart began her career as an actress. In 1980, she played Darong in Series 1 of game show The Adventure Game; she also worked as a continuity announcer and newsreader for both Radio 4 and Radio 2 before moving to television in 1981 ^[3].

[edit] TV news career

Since 27th August 1981, Stuart has presented almost every news bulletin devised on BBC television. The Ten O'Clock News is the only one of the channel's news programmes that she has not yet fronted. She has also appeared on The News Quiz and presented the news on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme each Sunday, and has continued 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. Moira retained her slot on BBC's Sunday AM show.^[4] 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 27th 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 [1]. The BBC declined to comment on why she was no longer being used, although rumours circulated within the BBC and commercial newsrooms that Ms Stuart was taken from all future bulletins because she was considered now "too old", at 55. Ms Stuart is still on the BBC's payroll, however.

[edit] Other projects

A keen music lover, Stuart has deputised for Humphrey Lyttelton on his Radio 2 Best of Jazz programme, participated in the British Jazz Awards as compere, 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 took part in the BBC documentary, Who Do You Think You Are? which helped trace back her family history. In it, 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. Stuart claims ancestral links to Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad & Great Britain. ^[5]. In the programme, Stuart also discovered her family's past links to slavery.^[2]

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 a documentary for BBC Television that examined the role of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the British bill that banned the slave trade.

[edit] 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. ^[6] Her interests include music, film and travel.

[edit] 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 Order of the British Empire for services to broadcasting in the Queen's Birthday Honours^[7]
2006 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh^[8], the University where her grandparents met.^[9]