After a holiday, Noele went out with a specially written variety act to get her into training for the London Palladium,
as principal boy in the Christmas, 1951, pantomime Humpty Dumpty.
"There's an atmosphere at the Palladium you find nowhere else on earth. It combines intimacy with size. The
Palladium and the Palace Theatre, Manchester, are my two favourite theatres."
In 1952, Noele was in two West End shows at once. While playing a lead part in Bet Your Life, with
Arthur Askey, she understudied Billy Worth in Call Me Madam, eventually taking over the part that Ethel
Merman had created in New York.
It was while on tour with Call Me Madam that Noele Gordon's career completely changed direction.
"We had reached the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, and as we had come south the audiences had got smaller, because by then
television had taken such a terrific hold in London and the Midlands.
"I thought if you can't lick 'em you'd better join 'em, and decided to get myself into television.
"By this time my agent was Sir Lew Grade who, with Val Parnell, was part of the consortium that eventually became Associated
Television. I told him I thought I would like to go to America, and he suggested I should learn something about television
production over there.
"I enrolled at New York University for a course in television production, direction and administration, and although
I didn't stay long enough to take the degree, the year I spent there was very useful experience."
Back in England she joined ATV as adviser to women's programmes, and was in at the start of ITV in London in September,
1955, as a trainee director. A month later she moved to Birmingham to help launch ITV in the Midlands.
Her temporary office was a dressing room at the Theatre Royal where, a couple of years earlier, she had decided to quit
the stage.
"I enrolled at New York University for a course in television production, direction and administration, and although
I didn't stay long enough to take the degree, the year I spent there was very useful experience."
Back in England she joined ATV as adviser to women's programmes, and was in at the start of ITV in London in September,
1955, as a trainee director. A month later she moved to Birmingham to help launch ITV in the Midlands.
Her temporary office was a dressing room at the Theatre Royal where, a couple of years earlier, she had decided to quit
the stage.
The Midlands "went commercial" in February, 1956, and although she had joined the company to be a production executive,
within the first week she was on the screen in a hastily prepared programme about theatrical folk called Tea with Noele
Gordon.
"I'm far too much of a ham to stay away from the screen!" she said.
The actress who went into TV production to be a "backroom girl" became a screen personality virtually overnight.
The same year Lunch Box started and while Noele continued to do interviews, she sang too, backed by the Jerry Allen
Trio.
The show ran eight years, four or five times a week, but when it was then tried as a tea-time programme called High-T
it lasted eight weeks.
There was no break for Noele. In November, 1964, Crossroads began and "Auntie Nollie", as she was known
to most people became Meg Richardson, the widow who created a motel out of the manor house her husband left her.
In 16 years of television, Noele has done most things, including the difficult and the dangerous. In 1958, helping
to cover an agricultural show at Shrewsbury she milked a cow. The first time she had tried this was on a cousin's
farm in Seattle, and the cow had kicked her.
As well as doing Tea with Noele Gordon and Lunch Box, she stood in many times as an announcer, presented
an advertising magazine and worked as an outside broadcast commentator.
