Stuttaford was then selected to challenge Freud again. In the 1979 general election Stuttaford received the highest number of Conservative votes ever recorded in the constituency, but the collapse of the Labour vote (many former Labour voters switched their support to the Liberals) ensured that Freud was again returned, this time with a slightly increased majority. In 1981, Stuttaford was recruited by the then editor of "The Times", Harold Evans, to be the paper's medical correspondent. Stuttaford had worked with Evans during the latter's campaign to secure compensation for the victims of Thalidomide. Later, Stuttaford became "The Times" medical columnist, a role he retained until January 2009. In the years that followed he continued to write the regular monthly column for "The Oldie" that he had begun in 1994. He filed his last piece for the magazine just a few days before his death. He was a frequent contributor to "Healthspan", an online retailer of vitamin supplements, and occasionally to other national newspapers and journals. He was accused by Dr Ben Goldacre in "The Guardian" of using an article in "The Times" to promote energy replacement pills that appear to have nothing more than a placebo effect. He was parodied in the satirical magazine "Private Eye" as 'Dr Thomas Utterfraud'.