Alastair Stewart: A life-changing diagnosis brings into sharp focus who your real friends are. It's very revealing

It was GB News’ fourth birthday on June 13th, a huge milestone for a ‘new kid on the block' TV station, which the critics said wouldn’t last a year.

We saw them off, added radio to our TV output, along with a lovely interactive website and a supporters’ membership programme. All are thriving, and we are now recognised as the fourth major media news outlet in the UK.

We truly are ‘The People’s Channel’.

I was proud to be a founding member of the team, and they asked if I’d come on air for an interview with the excellent Miriam Cates, a woman I had known and admired from her days as the Conservative MP for Stockbridge and Penistone.

Miriam was one of Boris Johnson’s red wall smashers in 2018, and the first Conservative MP in South Yorkshire since 1992. A Cambridge graduate in Natural Sciences, majoring in genetics, she also took a PGCE and taught biology.

For a while, her deep ambition was to be a concert pianist. Parliament misses her brain power and charm, but GB News are lucky to have her. She asked me if I had thought GB News would both survive and thrive.

In all honesty, I said I hadn’t known, but that I welcomed the opportunity to work for a station that stood for free speech and open debate across the spectrum.

I said I was sure the arrogance and complacency of both the BBC and ITV News had left the door wide open. To be fair, we feared Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV would see us off, not because they were better than us or even that good, they were neither. But we saw them off in the end.

It was a fun chat, and it was good to be back on air.

On Thursday, 19th June, Sally and I attended a reception hosted by the RSPCA. Sally is part of their new women’s network, and we are both, of course, huge animal lovers and respecters.

Sally has two donkeys. The first, Hobnob, was given to her by one of our two younger sons. But when Sal discovered that donkeys need to be in pairs, or they feel lonely and get depressed, she approached the RSPCA. And, once she’d passed the vetting, we were blessed with the arrival of Iggle Piggle. They are an important part of our lives, and the grandchildren love them.

One of the many people we were introduced to at the event was Sian Hansen, who has had a successful career in finance and policy work through think-tanks.

She told me she knew the backers of GB News at Legatum, and our Chairman, Paul Marshall, the hedge fund brother of my dear friend Penny Marshall. She was one of the stand-out reporters of her generation, as was her husband, Tim Ewert.

I told Sian I liked the owners and editorial bosses at GB News, all of whom have been very supportive of us since my dementia diagnosis and all of whom keep in touch. She was shocked to learn that none of my former bosses at ITV News had called or put pen to paper.

There were just a couple of speeches at the reception, which, on a blisteringly hot day, was about right. They were all inspirational about how this 200-year-old charity, founded in Queen Victoria's time, was focussed on a new and even more challenging future.

The mood was perfectly captured by RSPCA Ambassador Shirley Ballas, who talked about her rescue dog Bobby, whom she tended back to good health after an awful hit and run which left the little dog with a fractured pelvis.

She said he is now well and is loved and respected. He is more a friend than a pet, she said. We knew just what she meant and we all gave her a’10’!

The venue, the Garden Museum, sits next to Lambeth Palace, with the entrance on Lambeth Palace Road. We’d never been before, and it was packed with books, botany and art, and it contains the archive of English garden design. It is a joy for amateurs and professionals alike.

I’ve been to Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which boasts its own glorious gardens redesigned by the wife of the late Archbishop, Robert Runcie, Rosalind.

I also recall attending a reception held in the palace by Archbishop Rowan Williams for the homelessness charity Crisis. Rowan, a very clever man and profound thinker, talked about his own experience of homelessness and living on the street.

He’d also invited one of my absolute heroes, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, as he is one of the biggest financial supporters of Crisis. It was a remarkable gig, as they say.

On the news front, it has been a nervous week for the world with Trump’s finger hovering over the button for a B-2 Stealth bomber bunker buster attack on Iran’s underground nuclear facility.

It risks instability in the region and elsewhere. With a daughter living and working in Saudi Arabia, we have had a few twitchy moments. I grew up in the era of the four-minute warning, and it seems Trump will give us one second - if he elects to go for it.