Why I Never Married

By Noele Gordon of Crossroads

SUNDAY PEOPLE, MARCH 4th, 1973

“I HAVE TO BE ALONE.” No, that wasn’t Garbo talking, just Noele Gordon star of TV’s long-running soap opera Crossroads.

She was giving me the answer to one of the biggest puzzles in showbiz – why she has never married.

For like Meg Richardson, the widowed motel owner she plays in the serial, she is thoroughly nice.

Just the sort of woman to make the ideal wife, you would think. But Noele in her fifties, is adamant that she would not. “I have always been frightened of having the same face there all the time.” she said.

“I have got to be alone for certain periods of the day. I couldn’t stand having someone around me all the time and I don’t know if there are many men who would put up with that.”

Noele, known as Nolly by everyone connected with the production of Crossroads, doesn’t get depressed.

“I enjoy my own company too much, sometimes I feel like screaming when I’m with the same person all the time – even my mother. That’s why we live separately even though we have adjoining flats

“How could any marriage work with that type of relationship?”.

Noele did confess, however, to having been in love twice.

“The first man died some time ago” she said “I was engaged to the other[John Robertson Dunn Crichton] but he broke it off.”

Recently there was a ‘third’ romance with comedian Larry Grayson. Noele was a ‘victim’ in This Is Your Life and Larry was one of the guests.

Many viewers who saw the way they embraced, and heard Noele’s joke about waiting for Larry to propose were convinced they were going to wed.

“We were deluged with good wishes and requests about the date of the big day, but we’ve no intention of marrying.”


Sunday People, feature by Peter Oakes.

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