{"id":916073,"date":"2026-10-04T18:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T18:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/916073\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T18:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T18:02:14","slug":"play-school-presenter-alister-smart-dies-aged-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/916073\/","title":{"rendered":"Play School presenter Alister Smart dies aged 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian actor and beloved Play School presenter Alister Smart has died aged 90 at his home in East Gippsland, Victoria.<\/p>\n

Mr Smart died on September 9, but the news of his death has only recently become public.<\/p>\n

Born in Adelaide on November 30, 1935, and raised in part around Nowra, Mr Smart left school and joined his family’s piano restoration business.<\/p>\n

He soon developed an interest in pianos which prompted him to study at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music.<\/p>\n

He later turned to acting.<\/p>\n

\"Alister<\/p>\n

Veteran Play School presenter and actor Alister Smart has died aged 90. (ABC TV)<\/p>\n

He started his career in theatre in the early 1950s and appeared in television productions in Australia and the UK from the 1950s until the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

His credits include Number 96, Skippy, The Sullivans, Sons and Daughters, A Country Practice and Neighbours.<\/p>\n

Mr Smart featured on the very first episode of ABC’s Play School which aired in 1966.<\/p>\n

He would continue to appear as a presenter on Play School, now Australia’s longest running children’s show<\/a>, for the next 27 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian actor and beloved Play School presenter Alister Smart has died aged 90 at his home in East…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9716,483629,64,63,134,111061,30926],"class_list":["post-916073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-actor","tag-alister-smart","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-playschool","tag-presenter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}