Andrew Gardner

Andrew Gardner (25 September 1932 – 2 April 1999) was an English newsreader on Independent Television News (ITN) in the United Kingdom from 1962 to 1977. He was also one of the original presenters of the half hour News at Ten bulletin when it began in July 1967. Gardner read the news on the regional Thames At 6 (later Thames News) bulletin broadcast on the ITV London weekday franchise Thames Television from 1977 to his retirement in mid-1992. Biography Gardner was born as one of three children of an Upper Wimpole Street dentist in the middle-class Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire on 25 September 1932. He was educated at the independent Dauntsey's School in West Lavington, Wiltshire, before serving as a corporal in the Royal Air Force's medical administration during his National Service. Gardner considered becoming an actor but discovered he lacked the talent to pursue that career, and did not want to become a dentist like his father. When he was 21 years old, he moved to Rhodesia in 1954 to avoid seven years of examinations and became a writer of children's stories about a small hedgehog as a hobby, which was adapted into a ten-minute six-part radio series after working a clerical job with a firm of refrigerator manufacturers. Following an outbreak of the Asian flu epidemic, which reduced the number of available announcers and broadcasters to the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, he began a career in radio journalism in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1957, working as a freelance newsreader-reporter in Africa for the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and becoming a staff member 18 months later, working as a producer and nightly newsreel editor. Gardner was one of the first reporters of the masscares that took place during the Congo Crisis in 1960, and also broadcast in Angola, Congo and Mozambique. When he realised that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was about to disband, he returned to the United Kingdom in 1961. Gardner enrolled in a one-month broadcasting course at the BBC and began working for the corporation as a broadcaster for its African services and radio shows like Ten O'Clock and Topic for Tonight.