'Formidable' newscaster awarded OBE

Last updated at 16:54 17 June 2006


British TV newsreader Alastair Stewart, awarded an OBE in today's Queen's Birthday Honours, is no stranger to big announcements.

As one of the leading figureheads in the broadcast world, Stewart, 53, presents ITV's London Tonight, Lunchtime News and News at 10.30pm.

He returned to ITV News as an anchor on the ITV News Channel for the 2003 Iraq War. In February 2005 Stewart was awarded Presenter of the Year at the prestigious Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards, where he was praised as a "formidable presenter of rolling news".

For eleven years he presented a range of news and current affairs programmes for Carlton-Granada's London News Network, before the ITV merger in 2004.

His career in television started in 1976 with ITV's Southern Television and he has worked as a reporter, industrial correspondent, presenter and documentary maker. He studied economics, politics and sociology at Bristol University and was deputy president of the National Union of Students, 1974-76.

Some of the highlights of his long career in broadcasting include coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the 2004 Beslan siege tragedy. He was also the first British journalist to broadcast live from the recaptured Kuwait City in the first Gulf War.

Stewart is an active charity campaigner, with a number of high-profile roles. He is vice president of both NCH Action For Children and Homestart, Patron of Scope and the medical research charity Sane, and Vice Patron of The Zito Trust and The Mental Health Foundation, among other work.

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