Jon Stewart has quietly been running a charity for veterans in his spare time

Just when you didn’t think you could love the man any more, Jon Stewart has done it again.

For the last three years the outgoing host of The Daily Show - a vocal Iraq War critic - has been quietly running a programme designed to help war veterans break into the television industry when they return home.

Stewart and his The Daily Show colleagues run a five-week-long boot camp introduction to the TV business, which has helped several former servicemen and women land jobs in the industry.

He only started publicising the programme very recently - a decision tied to the fact that he is stepping down from hosting the show later this year.

Now he’s urging others in the television industry to do the same. Stewart was quoted in the New York Times as saying:

Please steal our idea... It isn’t charity. To be good in this business you have to bring in different voices from different places, and we have this wealth of experience that just wasn’t being tapped.

While critical of US foreign policy, Stewart has long been a supporter of men and women on the ground in foreign conflicts, visiting the wounded in hospital and highlighting the lack of government support veterans face when they return home. In 2011 he toured US bases in Afghanistan to talk to soldiers.

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