Stewart is 34 and originally from Oxford, England but now lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland with his wife Sarah-Jane who is chairperson of the Northern Ireland Scrabble Players Association.

Stewart's greatest Scrabble achievement has been to make it into the England team for the 2003 World Championships, which took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His UK tournament successes so far have included winning the top group of the Nottingham Nomads tournament twice and the ABSP Festival of Scrabble and Isle of Wight events. He also won the 2004 series of the Channel 4 quiz show Countdown and still gets old ladies stopping him in the street to talk about it.

He is also a regular computer operator at events around the country and devised the UK's game library Centre Star which features extensive coverage of many tournaments. In his spare time Stewart likes drinking Guinness, playing darts and pool, struggling with cryptic crosswords and odd sessions of experimental cookery. Nobody has been poisoned yet, but some say it can only be a matter of time.