Nick Hewer

Hewer was born in Swindon on 17 February 1944. His mother was Mary Patricia Hewer (née Jamison; 1918 - 1999) and his father, John David Radbourn Hewer (1915 - 2010), was a senior partner of Hewer, Spriggs and Wilson, a veterinary practice in the Old Town area of Swindon. They met when both were university students in Dublin. The family lived in Old Town and Hewer was educated at Clongowes Wood College, an exclusive Jesuit boarding school in County Kildare, Ireland. Hewer has two sisters and two brothers.

Hewer married Margo Spindler in 1973. They were divorced in 1985 after they had had two children. His son, James, briefly acted as co-director of his father's company.

Hewer moved to London in the 1960s aged 20 to join a public relations (PR) consultancy as a trainee. Within six years he had joined the board and eventually bought out the owner, becoming the sole shareholder. His PR company was hired by Amstrad to represent them in 1983. He spent 21 years in the Amstrad management group. He sold his PR agency in 1998.

In July 2008, Hewer took part in the charity driving event, the Mongol Rally, in a Renault 4, driving from London to Ulan Bator. He raised over £12,000 for Hope and Homes for Children. He wrote a series of blogs about his journey for the online travel section of the Daily Telegraph.

Hewer's status as a businessman and public figure has been used in various ways; for example, in 2012, he was one of many celebrities to help promote the change in the UK pension scheme to automatic enrolment. In 2013, he worked with Vista Print on their "Build Your Small Business" campaign, and in 2014 worked with Bark.com to promote its services marketplace product.

On 9 January 2012, Hewer became the new host of the Channel 4 game show Countdown taking over from the sports presenter Jeff Stelling.

In July 2012, Hewer presented a four-part series on BBC Two called The Farm Fixer, in which he assisted farmers in Northern Ireland in diversifying.

On 2 November 2012, Hewer received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Kingston University in recognition of his "outstanding contribution to business and entrepreneurship".

On 28 August 2013, he appeared in an episode of BBC One's, Who Do You Think You Are?.

Hewer and the ex-Amstrad owner, Alan Sugar, became friends through their working relationship. He became one of Sugar's advisers in The Apprentice on BBC One. On 18 December 2014, Hewer revealed that he had decided to leave the show after the tenth series, believing it to be "the appropriate time".

In July 2014, Hewer co-presented a BBC One documentary series with Margaret Mountford called Nick and Margaret: Too many Immigrants? which researched the impact of and attitudes towards immigrants in the UK.

In December 2015, he appeared, with Mountford, in BBC's Celebrity Antiques Road Trip.

Hewer has been a patron of the charity Pancreatic Cancer Action since 2015. In 2017, he presented the charity's BBC Radio 4 charity appeal during Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.

For many years, Hewer was a supporter of the Labour Party. While appearing on Question Time in 2017 he said that he had supported the party since Harold Wilson, but was critical of the leaderships of Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband. In January 2019, he said that he would no longer vote for Labour, after his Countdown co-presenter Rachel Riley received abuse on social media for speaking out against anti-Semitism within the party.

On 1 April 2019, Hewer became the President of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.