HUGH MORTIMER - It's the real thing
In many viewers' minds there has never been the slightest doubt that international businessman Hugh Mortimer has
always been a natural husband for Meg. However, fate managed to keep Hugh and Meg apart for many years until their much
heralded marriage in Spring 1975. In fact it fell to some of the other characters in this feature to act as the instruments
of fate and intervene in this oft-troubled relationship.
But first let's take a look at Hugh Mortimer. With two sons and financial interests all over the world, Hugh was
both committed to a family and a business when he walked into the world of Crossroads - and Meg Richardson's life. But
his abiding sense of fair-play soon shone through the worldly exterior when one of his sons was arrested for being drunk on
liquor sold illegally to him at Crossroads; straightaway he went and apologised to Meg, thereby sowing the seed that led -
albeit years later - to marriage.
However, Hugh's good nature nearly ruined their relationship for good in 1967 when he suddenly married Jane Templeton,
daughter of one of his Australian business partners. This move was not as heartless as it seemed to the thousands of
viewers whose letters of commiseration flooded in to Meg at the ATV studios. It was later revealed, as Hugh accompanied
his young bride to Britain for a critical brain operation, that he'd long known of her terminal illness and married her only
to give her some chance of happiness before she died.
So it's to this man - a man possessed of abundant compassion allied to charm and great business acumen - that Meg Richardson
has welded her future. Their love survived both the passage of time and trauma; who can doubt that it will now go from
strength to strength?