I can see a defamation lawsuit at some point in the future.
ITN has not clarified specifically what he was fired for and Alastair himself has admitted mistakes before deleting his account. As pointed out previously, the exchange was far more serious than just a Shakespeare quote.
I can see a defamation lawsuit at some point in the future.
ITN has not clarified specifically what he was fired for and Alastair himself has admitted mistakes before deleting his account. As pointed out previously, the exchange was far more serious than just a Shakespeare quote.
Yes, although scratching away at the Twitter replies, there are screenshots of comments Mr Shapland has (presumably) made over the last couple of years, that don't look good on facevalue. However, they are out of context, and his own action of deleting all his AS related tweets makes it difficult to reverse engineer what was said, and the dymamic between them. It's all become rather 'he said, she said' style
Whilst I don’t believe Al should have been sacked as it’s clear the offending Tweet had no racist intent.
The following quote from that petition sounds like exactly the sort of thing a racist trying to defend racism would make. So not sure it exactly helps Alistair’s case.
Quote:
Martin needs to take account the evolution of apes to humans of all races.
People are looking back at his timeline and finding an array of what I guess you could call "I hate white people" posts. I'll say no more on that point.
On the flip side, he's been receiving genuine and objectively racist abuse because of what's happened. Seems depressingly ironic to insult somebody based on their race because they're accused of seeing nothing but colour. These people deserve a smack.
Either way, Martin claims all he would've wanted was a personal apology, and I hope he's genuine when he says he didn't want Al to lose his job. Whatever way you look at it, it's sad to see such a legendary broadcaster reduced to this, and it hope it shines some light on how "cancel culture" does nothing but fuel further division and argument.
It's genuinely quite astonishing that a bad tweet may be the thing that ends up derailing Alastair Stewart's illustrious innings at ITV News – but not for the reasons that hysterical pundits are giving.
Until he drastically changed his lifestyle in 2004 (after a second drink-driving offence where he rammed his car into a telegraph pole on his way home with a Chinese takeaway) tales of Alastair's hell-raising were legendary in the industry.
At London Tonight in the 90s, it wasn't unheard of that he would have to be locked in his dressing room because he was too hammered to read the news at all, let alone on camera.
And on one overseas trip, he got so wrecked at dinner he spent the entire journey back to his hotel vomiting. One of the crew with him was an old roadie who claimed he hadn't seen anyone that **** since his days touring with Joe Cocker in the 60s "...and he had an arm full of heroin."
Reminds me of the way CNN's Jim Clancy was let go after a tweet about Israeli/Palestine conflict that was seen as anti Jewish. Another kind of madness that was.....
It's genuinely quite astonishing that a bad tweet may be the thing that ends up derailing Alastair Stewart's illustrious innings at ITV News – but not for the reasons that hysterical pundits are giving.
Until he drastically changed his lifestyle in 2004 (after a second drink-driving offence where he rammed his car into a telegraph pole on his way home with a Chinese takeaway) tales of Alastair's hell-raising were legendary in the industry.
At London Tonight in the 90s, it wasn't unheard of that he would have to be locked in his dressing room because he was too hammered to read the news at all, let alone on camera.
And on one overseas trip, he got so wrecked at dinner he spent the entire journey back to his hotel vomiting. One of the crew with him was an old roadie who claimed he hadn't seen anyone that **** since his days touring with Joe Cocker in the 60s "...and he had an arm full of heroin."
It really is incredible that this is what finished off his career - considering the almost overwhelming irony that he got done for drink driving twice despite preaching endless road safety on Police Camera Action.
You also have to wonder at 67, how much longer he would have had at ITN anyway. Jon Snow is still in their employ at 72 - but would Stewart really have gone on and on?