John Stapleton

John Martin Stapleton (born 24 February 1946) is a British award-winning journalist and presenter with fifty years experience in newspapers and television. He now works as a freelancer with various media outlets.

Early life

Stapleton was born in Oldham, Lancashire. His father Frank was secretary of the local Co-operative and his mother, June was a part-time primary school teacher. Stapleton was educated at Diggle Primary School^[1] and Hulme Grammar School, Oldham and St John's College of Further Education, Manchester where he did "A" levels. He did not go to university, but started working as a trainee reporter at the age of seventeen on the now defunct Eccles and Patricroft Journal. He was later indentured to the Oldham Evening Chronicle for three years before moving onto the Daily Sketch, first in Manchester and then London.

Career

Stapleton is a former Royal Television Society News Presenter of the Year. His career began on local newspapers in North West England, before becoming a staff reporter on the Daily Sketch in Fleet Street. His first job in television was as a researcher and script writer on This is Your Life, presented at the time by Eamonn Andrews.

He subsequently worked as a reporter on the Thames TV regional news magazine show Today from 1971 until 1975. He joined the BBC Nationwide programme in 1975 as a reporter, and then became one of the main presenters from 1977 until 1980. While on Nationwide he also carried out major investigations into council corruption in South Wales and protection rackets in Northern Ireland. He also compered a number of one-off light entertainment shows for the BBC, including the Miss United Kingdom beauty pageant. From 1980 until 1983, he was a correspondent on the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight programmes, reporting from trouble spots such as the Middle East and El Salvador before working for three months as Newsnight's correspondent in Argentina during the Falklands War. From 1983 to 1985, he worked at TV-am as a reporter and as a presenter of Good Morning Britain. In 1986 John rejoined the BBC, where he presented the BBC One peak time consumer programme Watchdog until 1993, alongside his wife Lynn Faulds Wood. John was also during this time a presenter for the BBC's Breakfast Time when, in 1986, the programme switched over to a news format.

In 1993 John returned to ITV to front the live morning talk show The Time, The Place, and for four years he presented the ITV Sunday morning programme My Favourite Hymns, in which he interviewed a wide variety of guests about their faith and its impact on their lives. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Earl Spencer, Princess Michael of Kent, the former South African president F.W. De Klerk, the author Maya Angelou and Coronation Street's William Roache were amongst his many guests.

In 1998, Stapleton joined the ITV breakfast programme GMTV as a presenter of the Newshour. In 1997, Stapleton, along with Sir Trevor McDonald, presented the live and controversial Monarchy debate for ITV in front of three thousand people at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre and at GMTV; he also anchored many major news stories. Among them, the war in Kosovo when he was based on the Albanian border covering the refugee crisis. This was followed by his anchoring four American elections, the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami in South East Asia, Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In 2004, he was made the Royal Television Society's News Presenter of the Year^[2] – largely for his work on GMTV covering the 2003 war in Iraq and interviews he conducted with political party leaders including the then Prime Minister Tony Blair. He returned to Iraq to front two special programmes for GMTV commemorating the fifth anniversary of the war. He is also a reporter for the prime time ITV Tonight programme. Stapleton has over the years also presented many regional news and current affairs programmes including the BBC's London Plus, Facing South for Meridian and Central Weekend Live for Central TV.^[3][4][5]

Stapleton has interviewed every British Prime Minister since James Callaghan in the 1970s and is one of the contributors to the BBC series Grumpy Old Men. He currently presents three political discussion programmes for ITV Central, The Lobby, transmitted in the Midlands, Last Orders for ITV Yorkshire and the London Debate transmitted in London and the South East.

In 2010, John joined the newly established ITV Breakfast programme Daybreak as their Special Correspondent. During his time with the programme, Stapleton was also a part-time presenter. In 2014, it was announced that Daybreak was to come to an end after four years of broadcasting. It would be replaced by a new breakfast programme Good Morning Britain. In July 2015, Stapleton left ITV Breakfast after 21 years.

On 4 May 2014 he presented his first radio programme on LBC, sitting in for Larry Lamb and has now become a regular cover presenter on the station.

On 22 July 2015, he left Good Morning Britain and ITV Breakfast after 17 years of morning TV.

Personal life

He only has one kidney that functions properly. In April 2008, he revealed, in a report for the BBC's The One Show, that when he was younger he suffered from the eating disorder anorexia nervosa.^[6]

He and his wife Lynn Faulds Wood live in St Margarets, London^[7] and have been married for more than 40 years.

He has been a supporter of Manchester City for more than 50 years ever since his father took him to see Stanley Matthews play for Blackpool against City at their old Maine Road ground in the 1950s.^[8]

References

External links

• John Stapleton Official Website
• John Stapleton – Good Morning Britain at itv.com
• John Stapleton on Twitter
  
• John Stapleton at the Internet Movie Database