[9] Her maternal grandfather, Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon, met his wife, Clara Christian, when both were studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh,[10][11] where she was the first black woman student.

This was denied by Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson when he was questioned by a House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee.

"[25] On 21 November 2009, it was reported in The Guardian that Chris Evans was "lining up" Stuart to read the news bulletins on his new BBC Radio 2 show from January 2010, when he was due to inherit the slot from Terry Wogan.

[8][40] Stuart was a judge (alongside Jo Brand, Jude Kelly and Joanne Harris) for the Orange Prize in 2005, when the winner was Lionel Shriver with We Need to Talk About Kevin.

[41][42] In 2006, Stuart played a comic version of herself in the Ricky Gervais television comedy Extras, supposedly involved in supplying drugs to Ronnie Corbett.

[38] According to a review of the programme: "The documentary is well-structured and the informed questioning by Stuart enables a debunking of the Wilberforce legend and a challenge to the myopia in Britain which focuses upon the abolitionists rather than those who were enslaved.

The extended and uncut version of the programme (shown the following evening, 3 June 2007) revealed that, while making a spoof appeal for work, she fluffed her lines on a number of occasions but took it all with her traditional good humour.

[56] In September 2024, Stuart decided to speak out after she fell victim to a sophisticated bank scam, stating that it nearly cost her a fortune.

in which she featured, she visited the Scottish Highlands, as well as to Antigua (where her great-great-grandfather was enslaved)[40][63] and to Dominica, where her great-grandfather George James Christian was born.

[61] Christian was a delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference in London (making a speech that was reported in The Times, about the treatment of South Africans in the Boer War),[8] before migrating to the Gold Coast, West Africa.

[40] During the programme, she discovered the story of how her maternal grandfather Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon met his wife Clara Christian when both were studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh,[10][11] where she was the first black woman student.

[12] While he completed his degree and qualified as a doctor in 1918 (initially going into practice in Kingussie), Stuart's grandmother did not finish medical studies, using money intended for her course to pay their bills instead.

[40] The couple ultimately settled in Bermuda, where in addition to being a physician Gordon became a parliamentarian, civil-rights activist and labour leader.

[11] In the programme, Stuart was visibly moved to learn more about her ancestors in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, and about their fight for human rights and social justice.