Born in Devon in 1941 and brought up in Wimbledon, Ed “Stewpot” Stewart was supposed to have a secure job when he left school playing double bass in a jazz band in Hong Kong – but when he got there, there was no band, no job, no friends – he was stranded.
Luckily, he was stranded outside a local radio station, so he went in and asked for a job. For the next four years, he was their sports commentator, film critic, disc jockey and tea-maker. When he got homesick, he did a radio commercial for an airline company in exchange for a flight home to England.
In July 1965, he joined Radio London and became their chief DJ, eventually ending up at the BBC, signing up with Radio 1 in 1967. In addition to hosting Junior Choice (which had as many as 16 million listeners), Ed also made many TV appearances, including Top of the Pops and Crackerjack.
For many years, Stewart was the figurehead for the children’s magazine Look-in, billed as the “Junior TV Times“.
In 1981, Stewart hit the headlines when he read out the names of four soldiers serving in Northern Ireland who, he said, had requested a record, and went on to play Danny Boy. But they were four of the five soldiers killed by the IRA the previous week in an attack in South Armagh.
The BBC said he mistook a memo warning that the names should not inadvertently be read out on the air for a request slip, and described the error as ‘unforgivable’.
Both he and the BBC apologised to the soldiers’ families.
Stewpot passed away on 9 January 2016 after suffering a major stroke. He was 74.
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In 1981, Stewart hit the headlines when he read out the names of four soldiers serving in Northern Ireland who, he said, had requested a record, and went on to play Danny Boy. But they were four of the five soldiers killed by the IRA the previous week in an attack in South Armagh.
