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 Gordon
Honeycombe was born in Karachi, British India, in September 1936. Educated
at the Edinburgh Academy and at University College, Oxford, he has an MA in
English. He did his National Service with the Royal Artillery, mainly in
Hong Kong, where he was also an announcer with Radio Hong Kong. In 1962, he
joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and acted with them for two years, at
Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Aldwych Theatre, London.
He became nationally known
as a TV newscaster when he joined ITN in May 1965, staying with ITN for 12½
years, until November 1977. He was twice voted the most popular newscaster
in Britain, by readers of the Daily Mirror and The Sun.
For the next seven years he
concentrated on his writing career, although he continued to appear on
television, presenting shows for Scottish TV and Southern TV and for the
BBC, among many other activities. During this period he wrote five books,
including the best-sellers RED WATCH and ROYAL WEDDING.
 In
January 1984 he joined TV-am as their chief newsreader and remained with
the company for the next five years. By 1988 he had become Britain's
longest-serving TV newscaster, and the most seen, reading as many as seven
bulletins every weekday on 'Good Morning Britain', between 6:00 and 9:25am.
He left TV-am in March 1989, and in April received the Newscaster of the
Year Award from the Television and Radio Industries Club. In 1986 he was
voted the most popular male TV newscaster by Women's Own.
Since 1965 Gordon has
written for television, radio, stage and films. He has also presented,
appeared in and narrated many TV programmes. He presented SOMETHING SPECIAL
for Scottish TV, THE LATE LATE SHOW for TVS, and the four times repeated
BBC TV series FAMILY HISTORY, which was based on his own researches. He
narrated ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S MYSTERIOUS WORLD for YTV, A SHRED OF EVIDENCE
for Thames TV, and SICK AS A PARROT for Channel 4. He has appeared in many
TV plays and series, including THE FOUNDATION, THE BRACK REPORT, CQ, FIRST
AMONG EQUALS and BAD COMPANY, as well as in the films RANSOM, THE MEDUSA
TOUCH, CASTAWAY, THE FOURTH PROTCOL, BULLSEYE and LET'S GET SKASE.  He
has sung for various charities, at the Old Vic, the Dominion Theatre, the
Players Theatre, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and at the Royal Opera
House, Covent Garden.
During his 29 years on
British television, he has also recorded the voice-overs or narrations of
many TV and other documentaries, training films, commercials and cinema
shorts, and has been involved in many industrial presentations,
conferences, in-house videos and fund-raising charity events.
A best-selling author and
playwright, Gordon Honeycombe has written 13 books: NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE
SAND (1969), which was also filmed: DRAGON UNDER THE HILL (1972), ADAM'S
TALE (1974), RED WATCH (1976), ROYAL WEDDING (1981), NAGASAKI 1945 (1981),
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (1981), THE YEAR OF THE PRINCESS (1982), THE MURDERS OF
THE BLACK MUSEUM (1982), SELFRIDGES (1984), THE TV-AM CELEBRATION OF THE
ROYAL WEDDING (1986), SIREN SONG (1992), and MORE MURDERS OF THE BLACK
MUSEUM (1993). He has also written several stage and radio dramatizations,
including THE REDEMPTION, LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE and PARADISE LOST, and
three TV plays THE GOLDEN VISION (BBC1, 1968), TIME AND AGAIN (Westward TV,
1974) and the THE THIRTEENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS (Granada TV, 1985). His
adaptation of THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLINS as a musical, for which he wrote
the book and lyrics, was staged in 1994.
 He
starred in a new play, SUSPECTS, in 1989 at Swansea, and in 1990 toured in
RUN FOR YOUR WIFE! with Les Dawson. He was the Emperor of China in ALADDIN
at the Wimbledon Theatre, with Cilla Black, 1989-90, and again played the
Emperor in ALADDIN at the Pavilion Theatre, Bournemouth, 1990-91, with Su
Pollard.
He produced and directed
his own play THE REDEMPTION for the Festival of Perth in Western Australia
in March 1990. His fourteenth book, THE COMPLETE MURDERS OF THE BLACK
MUSEUM was published in 1995.
Since settling in Perth,
Western Australia, Gordon has continued to work for radio, TV and the
theatre. He regularly does voice-over work for radio and television, as
well as documentary narrations. He has acted in a radio play for the ABC,
and has appeared in a national television ad campaign. He also acted in the
children's TV series, MINTY, a co-production between Scottish Television
and RT Films, and in THE ADVENTURES OF THE BUSH PATROL.
His theatre involvement
includes a season in Kings Park as Gremio in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW for
EHJ Productions,
and he produced a staged reading of his adaptation of PARADISE LOST with a
star-studded cast in St George's Cathedral, Perth. Gordon has also
performed with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. In September 1997 he was
King Hildebrand in PRINCESS IDA, and then Pooh-Bah in THE MIKADO in March
1999. He also appears in a feature film, LET'S GET SKASE, which was made in
Perth in 2000 and released in 2001.
At the end of June 2000 he
moved into a new apartment in the City, and in 2001 began writing a novel, Beach,
which was completed in September 2002. His aunt, Dorothy Barry, was 102 in
October and died in March 2003, when Gordon was in New Zealand.
On 10 November 2003 he
bought a HP laptop and a printer and now spends hours on the laptop every
day.
In August 2004, Gordon was
in Dubai for a few days – dune-bashing, camel-riding and belly-dancing, as
well as seeing the sights. He was in the UK in September, based in London,
celebrating his 68th birthday with friends in the Ivy Restaurant. For a
week he was in Cyprus, visiting locations in connection with a proposed
production, by a Polish film company, of THE EDGE OF HEAVEN.
Back in London, he and John Honeycombe acquired a Coat of Arms for the
Honeycombes at the College of Arms, and on his return to Australia,
initiated the setting up of a website called the Honeycombe Family History
Archive, containing over 3,000 photos, 22 family trees, certificates, texts
and books, etc (all the material he had gathered about the Honeycombes over
40 years). This was completed in March 2005. But the site will not be
available on the Net until April 2006.
Gordon was in the UK from 10 to 30
September. He played bridge in Bournemouth with Tony, Gerry and Geoff, met
up with his sister, Marion, in Edinburgh, visited his parents’ grave in
Morningside Cemetery, and his aunt’s (Dorothy Barry’s) grave in Logie
Cemetery, Bridge of Allan, and attended a college dinner.
On Thursday, 22 September, he was interviewed on
Good Morning Britain, as well as on the ITV Lunchtime News. He then read
the ITN 6.30 News with Mary Nightingale, more than 40 years after reading
his first News bulletin for ITN, when he was paid £25 a week. He left ITN in November
1977.
Julia Summerville, Selina Scott, Martyn Lewis and
Anna Ford also returned to ITN that week to read the News – it had been
Gordon’s idea that ITN’s Golden Oldies should return to help celebrate the
50th Anniversary of ITV.
He was in Cornwall with an old college friend, Sid
Bradley, over the weekend of 23-26 September, staying in a chalet at
Honicombe Manor Holiday Village, Calstock, where he planted a tree, a cedar
of Lebanon, to replace a sequoia cut down the previous year. The sequoia
had been planted in 1984. On 27 September he celebrated his 69th
birthday at the Ivy with an old school-friend, Francis Walker.
On his return to Perth he initiated the
computerizing of all the material in his 35 Scrapbooks, and on 3 November
his fourth novel and 14th book, BEACH, was published in Perth.
200 copies of BEACH were privately printed by
Gordon, but although it sold well in Perth, no publisher took it up. He
flew to New Zealand on 10 April via Melbourne, where he met up with Ross
Honeycombe and his family and the Healesville Honeycombes. In Auckland he
stayed with Alan Macleod and his family and met up with the Honeycombes and
the Marinovich family, also Darrin and Craig. In Tauranga he stayed with
Nigel Blakeborough and Jo, who married a few months later. Back in Perth he
attended the wedding celebrations of Vasyl Holobotovsky and his young wife,
Svitlana, on 28 April 2006. Meanwhile, he lunched with the Ambrosians every
month, went to the Ballet, and did occasional Voice-overs.
Phil Kelly and Gordon, after much editing and
cutting, involving five drafts, completed the screenplay of THE EDGE OF
HEAVEN. Phil then began work on the screenplay of BEACH. The
computerisation of Gordon's Scrapbooks, covering his life from 1936 to
2006, was completed by Yuri Kaydanov in October. It contained over 3,000
items, photos, newspaper cuttings, programmes, articles, etc.
On 17 August 2006, Gordon was in Townsville and
Ayr, Queensland, for the celebrations for John Honeycombe's 70th birthday,
which was on 20 August. He returned to Perth on 26 August and celebrated his
own 70th birthday, on 27 September, on five different occasions with five
different groups of friends.
In September he began writing a History of the
Origins of the Early Honeycombes for the Honeycombe Archive and initiated
the copying on DVD of all the taped interviews concerning the Honeycombes
he had made over the past 40 years.
The Scrapbooks section of the website, containing over 4,000
items, was completed by Yuri Kaydanov by the end of October 2006. Further additions and corrections were
made over the next six months. On 4
November Gordon flew to Thailand, to Phuket, for a week, where he met up
with Vic and Stevie Pocock, now living in Chiang Mai. From 18 November he spent a week in
Kalbarri, WA. Ronnie Sinclair,
ex-EA, was in Perth at the end of November.
In January 2007 Gordon finished writing the early history of
the Honeycombes for the Honeycombe Archive website. A new friend, Sibian Jodrell, committed
suicide on 10 January, his 29th birthday.
On 26 January Gordon attended the Australia Day ceremony at the
Council House and was at the christening of Victoria Elizabeth Holobotovsky
on 11 February. The final drafts of
the screenplay of BEACH, written by Gordon and Phil Kelly, were completed
in March and revised in April and October.
At the end of March, Ayden Armitage, a friend of Carl Honeycombe in
NZ (who set off on his travels around the world in April) came to stay
while working in the mines and elsewhere, and on 13 May Gordon began work
on a short history of the Honeycombes who emigrated to New Zealand in
1873. This was for the Honeycombe
Archive and was completed in August 2007.
In September he got in touch with Ben Darwin and advised him about
TV presentation during the Rugby World Cup in France and the UK. On 27 September Gordon was 71.
Meanwhile, the one-act opera of SIREN SONG, based on his book,
was published (libretto and music) by Editions Peters in September and John
Blake Publishing emailed about reissuing both his books about THE MURDERS
OF THE BLACK MUSEUM. In October
2007, Gordon auditioned for (and got) the role of Gordon in a film, THE
SCULPTOR, directed by Chris Kenworthy, to be made in WA in March 2008. Then Screen West organised and presented
a very successful Read-through of the screenplay of BEACH before an invited
audience at the Subiaco Arts Centre on 28 November 2007.
Also in November Gordon backed the winner in the Melbourne
Cup, Efficient, and booked a seat on a 14-day Air Cruise, on a private
Qantas all Business Class jet, flying to Sarawak, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos
and Cambodia, departing Sydney on 29 January 2008.
On 28 March 2008, Gordon began work on THE SCULPTOR, a film
made by Skyview Films in and around Perth, WA, and directed by Chris
Kenworthy. He played the part of
Gordon, leader of a black magic cult, and did five days’ work over a period
of three weeks, until 16 April. The
film starred Paul Goddard, Melanie Vallejo, Georgina Andrews and Matt Penny.
The film has yet to be released.
In May 2008, Gordon was in New Zealand, staying with Alan and Duriena Macleod in Auckland, and with Nigel and Jo Blakeborough in Tauranga. He also met up again with Darrin Maynard and Craig Boyle, who had stayed with him in London in 1984. There was a gathering of the NZ Honeycombes at the Marinovich home at Kumeu, and Gordon visited Charlie and Ray Honeycombe in Rotorua. Just before Xmas 2008 he joined all 18 of the Queensland Honeycombes for another gathering, at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast.
Meanwhile, the text, proofs, jacket and photos of the reissue of MURDERS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM all had to be checked before the book's eventual publication, by John Blake, on 27 April 2009 in the UK and in August in Australia.
On 13 February 2009, Tommy Tymuszkin from Poland, who was improving his English at the Milner School in Perth, moved for six months into Gordon's apartment. Then, on 20 February, Gordon flew to Kalgoorlie to stay for a weekend with Carl Honeycombe and his girl-friend, Flick. On 26 February Gordon's heart began fibrillating again (for the third time - the last time being four years ago). This entailed a daily intake of betablockers and Marevan pills until a cardioversion was possible. Meanwhile, on 16 April, Nigel and Jo came to Perth and stayed with Gordon for five days. They spent a day on Rottnest Island and went on a day-long wineries boat-trip up the Swan River.
On 1 May, a cardioversion was successfully performed on Gordon in the Mount Hospital. It took three minutes and he was allowed out three hours later.
THE SCULPTOR was shown at the Dungog Film Festival in NSW on 30 May.
On 2 July Gordon's sister, Marion Campbell, died in Peebles. She was 78.
On Friday, 10 July Gordon flew to London in an Emirates A380. He stayed with Deb and Sandy Macfarlane in Frimley. In London he saw two showbiz agents, as well as his publisher, John Blake. With Russ Coffey he visited Alan McCormick, the Curator of the Crime Museum, New Scotland Yard. He met up with Francis Walker, Doina Percival, Paul and Steve, stayed with Sid Bradley in York and drove with Michi Stoeckli down to Cornwall, where they stayed at Honicombe. On 30 July, he attended the marriage of his niece, Felicity, to Dennis Heard-White, in Eastbourne. She was given away by her father, Jim Campbell, Gordon's brother-in-law.
Gordon returned to Perth on 4 August 2009
and Tommy left for Brisbane on 26 August.
In September, Gordon renewed the plants on his balcony, all with new pots.
Climbing jasmine and bougainvillea, and a lemon tree, were
added to some succulents, as well as some lilies and flowering
shrubs. A park bench provided the seating.
September was the wettest in Perth for some
time. But voice-overs picked up.
A BCC on his shoulder had to be excised
at the end of October and then on the 30 October Gordon began
fibrillating again. At the same time a lump was discovered
next to a kidney. This, however, after a CT Scan, turned out
to be a benign cyst. Visits were made to his cardiologist
and a urologist. But no cardioversion was required this time
and he was declared clear of any internal problems.
No rain fell in the City of Perth from 21
November until the end of February, and the City experienced
its hottest and driest summer ever, over December and into
January and February 2010.
On 22 March a series of ferocious thunderstorms swept
over the City: driving rain flooded streets and hail damaged
over 58,000 cars and several suburbs.
On 8 May Ross Honeycombe flew into Perth and stayed with
Gordon for four days. His parents, Alan and Beth, were also
in Perth, passing through on a round-trip of Australia, as
were Rob and Kerryn Honeycombe and their two little girls
from Brisbane. They all had breakfast at the Hilton Hotel
on 9 May. On 4 June, Carl and his fiancée, Flick, at
present living and working in Kalgoorlie, stayed for a few
days.
On 3 July Gordon flew to Townsville for the 70th birthday
celebrations of Beth Honeycombe on Magnetic Island, in the
Peppers Resort at Nelly Bay Family friends and the families
of David, Peter and Rob, the three sons of Beth and John,
were also there – 10 grandchildren in all, Gordon returned
on 9 July to a cold and rainy Perth, where much building of
office and residential towers, new facades and amenities was
still going on. He then began writing his Memoirs, covering
the first 30 years only, from 1936 to 1966.
His 74th birthday on 27 September 2010 was celebrated with
Carl and Flick, and Jocelyn, with whom he attended a Gala
Reception for the WA Ballet Company at the Parmelia Hilton
on 21 November. Tess Stroud’s 80th birthday was celebrated
on 14 December at Sharon’s home in Mosman Park, when it was
announced that Tess had married Jim Robinson.
In January 2011, Nick Honeycombe, Carl’s father, stayed with
Gordon in Perth on his way to and from a holiday in Kalgoorlie.
Alistair Sawers dropped in on 18 January, and Richard Chidley,
whom Gordon had last seen in 1974, stayed for a few days.
They went on a Wine Cruise and flew to Rottnest Island for
the day.
By the end of July 2011 Gordon had completed the writing
of an autobiography, What Went Before, 1936 to1966. By this
time he had lost a quarter of his UK income, the exchange
rate, pounds to dollars, having gone from .37 in 1993 to .67.
He celebrated his 75th birthday with a Tea Party on Saturday,
24 September, in the revolving C Restaurant on the 33rd floor
of St Martin’s Tower in Perth, from 2.0 to 4.30 pm. Present
were the Lord Mayor, Lisa Scaffidi; the Deputy Lord Mayor,
Janet Davidson & her husband, Mike; Tess Stroud &
Jim Robinson; Lee & Bruce Evensen; Jocelyn Basterfield;
Adrian & Suzanne Momber; David Locke & Leandra Fallis;
Nick & Lilia Male; Steve & Jenny Trafford; Adrian
Mulraney & Avril; Ross Honeycombe; Carl Honeycombe &
Flick; Rose & Shayne Honeycombe; Steve Drane; Yuri Kaydanov;
and Chris Gray.
At the end of October the Queen was in Perth to open the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
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