He is known for his work as a presenter and reporter on ITV breakfast television (TV-am, GMTV and Daybreak) in addition to hosting Nationwide and Watchdog for the BBC.

Stapleton's career began on local newspapers in North West England, before becoming a staff reporter on the Daily Sketch in Fleet Street.

He also compered a number of one-off light entertainment shows for the BBC, including the Miss United Kingdom beauty pageant.

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.

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 – 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.

[5][6] Stapleton has interviewed many British Prime Minister beginning with James Callaghan in the 1970s and was one of the contributors to the BBC series Grumpy Old Men.

He has worked in radio, standing in for other presenters on LBC, facilitates conferences, appeared on TV as a pundit for the BBC News Channel, and writes for newspapers.

Stapleton met his then teacher wife Lynn Faulds Wood in 1971[7] while she worked in her second job as a barmaid in a Richmond public house.