John Stapleton
John Stapleton is a former Royal Television Society Presenter of the Year. He was given this prestigious award in 2004 for his work on GMTV`s `The News Hour` and his contribution to the rest of the programme while on assignment at major news events.
John has been at GMTV for 10 years and has a total of 40 years experience in newspapers and television.
John began his career in local and national newspapers and from 1975 until 1980 worked as a reporter and presenter on BBC`s `Nationwide` programme. He later became a foreign correspondent for both `Panorama` and `Newsnight` where he covered the Middle East crisis, the troubles in Northern Ireland and in 1982 spent three months `behind enemy lines` in Argentina reporting on the Falklands war.
John and his wife, Lynn Faulds Wood, presented the highly popular `Watchdog` programme for the BBC for eight years and John also anchored ITV`s daily discussion programme `The Time The Place` for eight years.
John joined GMTV in May 1998. While at GMTV he twice visited Albania and Kosovo to report on the refugee crisis, covered the two American elections and, from Ground Zero, the anniversary of the September 11th atrocity. John spent a month in Kuwait reporting on the war with Iraq in 2003. He anchored GMTV`s coverage of the Tsunami from Thailand, the Pope`s funeral from Rome and the floods in New Orleans. Most recently he returned to Iraq to report on the fifth anniversary of the war.
John also spent seven years presenting “My Favourite Hymns” a programme in which he interviewed everyone from Archbishop Tutu through to Coronation Street stars about their lives and their faith.
He has interviewed every Prime Minister since James Callaghan in the 1970’s and is the only presenter in TV to have worked for all three major breakfast tv stations: TV-am the BBC and now GMTV. John has also been a contributor to the last series of `Grumpy Old Men` on BBC2.
John has been married to Lynn Faulds Wood for 30 years and they have a twenty-year-old son Nick who, like his dad, is a mad keen Manchester City fan.