{"id":2038849,"date":"2025-09-21T11:39:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T11:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2038849"},"modified":"2025-09-21T11:39:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T11:39:27","slug":"john-stapletons-message-to-me-days-before-he-died-showed-his-kindness-to-the-very-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/john-stapletons-message-to-me-days-before-he-died-showed-his-kindness-to-the-very-end\/","title":{"rendered":"John Stapleton’s message to me days before he died showed his kindness to the very end"},"content":{"rendered":"

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John Stapleton has died at the age of 79 from Parkinson\u2019s disease, which was complicated by pneumonia<\/h2>\n
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11:06, 21 Sep 2025<\/span>Updated 11:38, 21 Sep 2025<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mark Jefferies is the Showbiz Editor at the Daily Mirror, writing about television and interviewing celebrities for the paper for over 15 years. Mark covers the latest showbiz news and enjoys watching and writing about new documentaries, police dramas and reality TV shows. He has also been to Australia a number of times to cover ITV series I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! for the Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"John<\/figure>\n<\/div>
<\/g><\/clippath><\/defs><\/svg><\/span>John Stapleton has died at the age of 79<\/span>(Image: BBC)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Polite and dignified to the end, John Stapleton certainly didn\u2019t need to reply to emails in his final days.<\/p>\n

We had been discussing a follow up interview about his Parkinson\u2019s disease and I had hoped to call him last week, to discuss his health and the fortunes of our beloved Manchester City.<\/p>\n

But his reply wasn\u2019t a happy one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m afraid you might have missed your chance, I\u2019m in hospital at the moment. Best, John.\u201d<\/p>\n

I carried on with my day, hoping we would get to speak again in a few weeks instead, and even went to Manchester that evening to watch City beat Napoli. John would have enjoyed that.<\/p>\n

But it would have been the last game he got to watch as we learned he died this morning, leaving me shocked and saddened.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know John that well but I had only ever heard good things about him during his career at BBC and ITV from colleagues like Susanna Reid.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: John Stapleton dead: GMTV and Watchdog legend dies at 79<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"John<\/figure>\n<\/div>
<\/g><\/clippath><\/defs><\/svg><\/span>John was a firm favourite on GMB where he hosted alongside Susanna Reid, Ben Shephard and Ranvir Singh in his later career<\/span>(Image: Ken McKay\/ITV\/REX)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

And speaking to him last October it was clear he was an experienced journalist and able to give me all the soundbites and quotes I needed with ease, even as he was working on improving his speech. A few days earlier he has announced he was battling Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

But he was upbeat and not about to let it hold him back. At the time he told me: \u201cYou can\u2019t escape these things as you grow older, these kinds of developments are sort of inevitable. You learn to live with it, get on with it and try to be as positive as you can.<\/p>\n

\u201cParkinson\u2019s is not going to go away, so learn to live with it. I take the best advice I can from my neurologist, from my speech therapist, and get on with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"John<\/figure>\n<\/div>
<\/g><\/clippath><\/defs><\/svg><\/span>John Stapleton and wife Lynn Faulds Wood hosted Watchdog in the 1980s<\/span>(Image: Daily Record)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

John was having weekly sessions with a speech therapist to ensure he could still communicate well after his speech showed signs of deteriorating.<\/p>\n

And that allowed him to look back over his career when we spoke last year, and he was clearly happy and rightly proud of his brilliant career.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI had a wonderful time. I\u2019ve worked for the BBC, I worked for ITV<\/a>, and there\u2019s been a few ups and downs but, overall, I\u2019ve been very lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on Nationwide, on Panorama, on Newsnight. I did the chat show The Time, The Place. I did Watchdog with Lynn, which used to get six, seven million viewers a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, of course, GMTV. I had 17 years of getting up at half past three or quarter to four and doing breakfast television with the lovely Penny Smith, Eammon, Fiona Phillips and Lorraine Kelly. We had a great time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned things in local newspapers, who did what, when, how and why. That stuff never left me. As a friend once said, \u2018you made this tiny bit of talent stretch a long way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was being modest of course. No one has a career of over 50 years without huge talent and warmth on screen as the tributes coming in from former colleagues prove.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really sad and sorry we didn\u2019t get to have that final call.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.mirror.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Stapleton has died at the age of 79 from Parkinson\u2019s disease, which was complicated by pneumonia 11:06, 21 Sep 2025Updated 11:38, 21 Sep 2025 Mark Jefferies is the Showbiz Editor at the Daily Mirror, writing about television and interviewing celebrities for the paper for over 15 years. Mark covers the latest showbiz news and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2038850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[25507,376946,372252,376947],"class_list":["post-2038849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-bbc","tag-gmtv","tag-good-morning-britain","tag-parkinsons-disease"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/John-Stapletons-message-to-me-days-before-he-died-showed.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2038849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2038850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2038849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2038849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2038849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}