Moira Stuart

Early life Moira Stuart was born at the Royal Free Hospital in London, on 2 September 1949, to Caribbean parents: her mother, Marjorie Gordon, was from Dominica and her father, Harold Stuart, a lawyer, was from Barbados. She has two sisters, Sandra Simmons and Sharon Davis-Murdoch. where she was the first black woman student.

She was educated in London until she was 13, attending Our Lady's Catholic High School, Stamford Hill. She then moved with her family to Bermuda for a time, returning at the age of 15 to London, where she attended college.

Career

Early career Stuart began working with the BBC in the 1970s and was a production assistant in the Radio Talks and Documentaries department. She was a continuity announcer and newsreader for both BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2, reading her first Radio 4 news bulletin in 1978, and in 1980 she played Darong in series one of game show The Adventure Game. She moved to television news in 1981, when she co-presented News After Noon.

TV news career Stuart was the UK's first female British-Caribbean television newsreader. Since 27 August 1981, she has presented on 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 and its successor programme Sunday AM with Andrew Marr. She presented the news for BBC Breakfast, until 2 May 2006, when the broadcast was reorganised. Stuart retained her slot on BBC's Sunday AM show and 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. quote="Throughout her 30-plus years at the BBC,Moira has achieved a great deal.She has always been a model professionalas well as being much loved and admired by both the public and her BBC colleagues.Everyone in BBC News wishes herall the best for the future." — Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News (2007). This prompted a backlash, accusing the BBC of ageism and sexism. The BBC initially declined to comment on why she was no longer being used, but rumours circulated within the BBC and commercial newsrooms that Stuart had been removed because she was considered "too old" at 57, although Anna Ford had continued anchoring the BBC One O'Clock News until her retirement at 62. This was denied by Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson when he was questioned by a House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee. Thompson stated: "BBC News, News 24, the radio networks, have changed over the years and the traditional role of the newsreader, as opposed to a correspondent or presenter, has virtually died out over the services.... We tend to use journalists across BBC news programmes ... to read the news headlines."

Stuart's 26-year career with BBC Television News ended on 3 October 2007.

In February 2009, Stuart narrated a Channel 4 documentary programme on ageism called Too Old to Work, looking at ageism in the jobs market, which was broadcast in the Dispatches series.

She returned to BBC News, reading the news for The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, on 11 January 2010. She presented her last bulletins for the show on 14 December 2018.

She later joined Classic FM, from February 2019, to present the news on weekdays during the breakfast show, and from July 2019 would be presenting her own Saturday afternoon show, Moira Stuart’s Hall of Fame Concert. Stuart, who described the move as "a wonderful opportunity to take a whole new journey, with people I really like and admire", made her debut on Classic FM on 11 February 2019.

From 9 August 2020, she hosted a Sunday evening series, Moira Stuart Meets…, and later, The Hall of Fame Concert, on Classic FM.

Other projects A keen music lover, Stuart deputised for Humphrey Lyttelton on his BBC Radio 2 Best of Jazz programme, has participated in the BBC Jazz Awards as compère, and features as a narrator on Soweto Kinch's 2006 jazz-rap album A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the Tower Block.

With Adam Shaw, she also presented the BBC Two personal finance series Cashing In.

Stuart has served on various boards and judging panels including Amnesty International, the Royal Television Society, BAFTA, United Nations Association, the Orange Prize, the London Fair Play Consortium, the Human Genetics Commission, the Queen's Anniversary Prize, and the Grierson Trust.

In November 2004, Stuart was the subject of an episode of the BBC genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? (series 1, episode 6), which helped trace her family history.

Stuart was a judge (alongside Jo Brand, Jude Kelly and Joanne Harris) for the Orange Prize in 2005, when the winner was Lionel Shriver with We Need to Talk About Kevin.

In 2006, Stuart played a comic version of herself in the Ricky Gervais television 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 the programme (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, 2009 and 2010, she appeared in a series of advertisements for HMRC promoting tax-return procedures.

In March 2014, Stuart began hosting the Sunday late-night BBC Radio 2 programme Music Until Midnight, a slot that previously broadcast David Jacobs' long-running Easy listening programme until 2013. She alternates this Sunday-night slot with Oscar-winning songwriter Don Black. She has also presented music documentary series for Radio 2, including Strong and Sassy - Inspiring Women of Jazz (featuring Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Adelaide Hall, Anita O'Day and Lena Horne) and Jazz Guitar Greats.

In July 2015, Stuart appeared on the television comedy panel show Would I Lie to You? (Series 9, Episode 1).

In 2021, it was announced that she would dance with Aljaž Škorjanec in the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special, which was broadcast on Christmas Day. In 2022, she announced the terms and conditions for the Strictly Come Dancing Halloween Special.

In November 2022, Stuart appeared as a guest presenter on Countdown, as part of the Channel 4 show's 40th birthday celebrations.

In September 2024, Stuart decided to speak out after she fell victim to a sophisticated bank scam, stating that it nearly cost her a fortune.

Family Her mother, Marjorie Gordon (1921–2017), who was born in Dominica, and her father Harold Stuart (1914–1966), a Barbadian lawyer, who was a member, with George Browne, of the vocal trio Three Just Men. Her cousin is the Ghana-born publisher and editor Margaret Busby.

Talking about her ancestry, Stuart has said that she is from a "long line of outsiders" and that she considers herself "a true mongrel – and proud of it". For the 2004 edition of Who Do You Think You Are? in which she featured, she visited the Scottish Highlands, as well as to Antigua (where her great-great-grandfather was enslaved) and to Dominica, where her great-grandfather George James Christian was born. Christian was a delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference in London (making a speech that was reported in The Times, about the treatment of South Africans in the Boer War),

In 2021, she discovered through research by Ancestry UK that, during the Second World War, her mother had worked as a nurse probationer at St Helier Hospital and the children's hospital on the same site, Queen Mary's Hospital in Carshalton. These twin hospitals were among the most heavily bombed hospitals in England.

Stuart recalled: "She told me once that literally every time there was a bombing raid, she would take all of the children out of their beds, put them underneath the beds for protection, and those that she couldn't move she would cover with her own body."

Honours, awards and achievements Stuart was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2001 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to media. 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. 2003: named one of "100 Great Black Britons". 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. 2012: awarded the degree Honorary Doctor of Letters by De Montfort University. 2013: received an honorary doctorate from Canterbury Christ Church University. 2020: received Harvey Lee Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting at Broadcasting Press Guild Awards. 2022: appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to media. 2022: honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Northumbria University, Newcastle.