Who is Moira Stuart? Meet the legendary broadcaster who was the first female Caribbean newsreader on TV

9 December 2021, 15:30

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

The trailblazing radio and television presenter whose history-making career has earned her an OBE for services to broadcasting.

Strictly Come Dancing will be dazzling us through our screens this Christmas Day, with six new celebrity contestants glittering across that shiny floor in the hope of winning the coveted Strictly Glitterball.

And one of the contestants is Moira Stuart, one of the nation’s best-known and best-loved presenters. As well as being a Classic FM presenter, Stuart has an esteemed 40-year career as a TV and radio newsreader and presenter behind her.

Read more: Broadcasting legend Moira Stuart joins Classic FM

Who is Moira Stuart?

Moira Stuart OBE is a British radio and television presenter and broadcaster. Over a career that’s spanned more than forty years, Stuart, who currently presents on Classic FM, has made television history and has an OBE under her belt for her services to broadcasting.

She was born in Hampstead on 2 September 1949, one of three girls born to Caribbean parents. Her mother was Dominican Marjorie Gordon and her father was Harold Stuart, a Barbadian lawyer. The family moved to Bermuda when Stuart was 13, and she lived there until the age of 15, when she returned to London to study at college.

Stuart started working in broadcasting in the 1970s, starting out as a production assistant in the Talks and Documentaries department at the BBC, before going on to be a radio continuity reader and newsreader.

What is Moira Stuart famous for?

In 1980, Stuart appeared on TV in the first series of the sci-fi game show, The Adventure Game, acting the part of Darong.

The next year, she made TV history when she became the first Black and Caribbean female newsreader on British national television, and the appearance marked the beginning of an illustrious career as a TV newsreader that’s made her familiar to millions.

Her career has included reading TV news on News After Noon, Sunday AM, The Andrew Marr Show and BBC Breakfast, as well as being the newsreader for several radio shows, including The Chris Evans Breakfast Show and Classic FM’s More Music Breakfast.

She has also appeared in Ricky Gervais’ Extras, and hosted and appeared in quiz shows. In 2007, she presented the documentary In Search of Wilberforce. She’s also hosted music programmes on the radio.

Stuart joined the Classic FM family in 2019, coupling her decades of broadcasting experience with her passion for classical music. She presented the news on Classic FM’s More Music Breakfast before taking the helm for her own programmes, Moira Stuart’s Hall of Fame Concert on Saturday afternoons, and her interview show, Moira Stuart Meets….

When her interview show launched in 2020, Stuart described it as “a delicious balance of my two great loves – music and people – and a perfect escape from the lockdown blues.”

Read more: Moira Stuart to host new interview series on Classic FM

Stuart was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to broadcasting.

She has won a raft of other prestigious awards, including Best Newscaster of the Year in the 1988 TV and Radio Industries Club Awards, and the Harvey Lee Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting at Broadcasting Press Guild Awards in 2020.

She holds an honorary doctorate from Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Edinburgh, which is the university where her maternal grandparents Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon and Clara Christian met, and she has been named an Honorary Doctor of Letters by De Montfort University.

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Who is Moira dancing with in the Strictly Christmas Special?

Now Stuart is back on the small screen, appearing in the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special, which airs on Christmas Day.

Stuart will be dancing a Christmas-inspired number with Strictly stalwart, Aljaž Škorjanec. The dancer, who is a 19-time Slovenian champion in ballroom, Latin and Ten Dance, joined Strictly for the TV show’s eleventh season in 2013, and he and his partner, the model Abbey Clancy, won that year.

“I’m really looking forward to the Strictly Christmas special,” Moira Stuart has said. “I’ve loved dancing for as long as I can remember. In fact it even helped me try to keep warm in my early cold water flat!”

Listen to Moira Stuart Meets... and Moira Stuart’s Hall of Fame Concert on Classic FM, on Global Player.