Broadcaster Alastair Stewart has revealed he can no longer tie his shoelaces as he battles dementia.
The longest-serving male newsreader on British television retired in 2023 after a 50-year career in TV.
Mr Stewart, 72, announced he was diagnosed with early-onset vascular dementia a series of “minor strokes”.
He told the Telegraph: “I’ve covered the Gulf War and run the very first television Leaders’ debate, but now I can’t tie my own shoelaces or choose my own shirt.
“But there’s no point feeling self-indulgent about it. I won’t condemn myself to an awful life in the short term.”
Mr Stewart began his career at ITV’s Southern Television in Southampton in 1976 and later joined ITN in 1980.
He left ITV News in 2020, where he had presented a range of news and current affairs programmes including the evening news, lunchtime news and News At Ten.
The following year joined GB News, but stepped away from discussion programme Alastair Stewart And Friends in March 2023.
Following his diagnosis, Mr Stewart was told by a psychologist to think back and find three things that made him happy at the end of each day.
He confesses this always involves being with his grandchildren, describing them as his “medicine”.
Last year, Mr Stewart told GB News programme The Camilla Tominey Show on Sunday: “I mean, the headline story, and it is relatively dramatic, I suppose, is that about six, nine months ago, I began to feel one of my favourite words, a bit discombobulated.
“I wasn’t becoming forgetful but things like doing your shoelaces properly – that’s how I wear these lovely moccasins now – making sure your tie was straight, remembering that the call time for your programme is four o’clock and not five o’clock, not turning up early or late, and stuff like that.
“I then decided at my ripe old age of late 50s, early 60s, that I might have something wrong.”
