Kenneth Kendall

Kenneth Kendall (7 August 1924 – 14 December 2012) was a British broadcaster. He worked for many years as a newsreader for the BBC, where he was a contemporary of fellow newsreaders Richard Baker and Robert Dougall. He is also remembered as the host of the Channel 4 game show Treasure Hunt, which ran between 1982 and 1989, as well as the host of The World Tonight in the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Early life Kendall was born in Mysore, India where his father, Frederic William Kendall (d. 30 May 1945), worked as a mining engineer at a gold mine. He was brought up in Cornwall. Kendall was educated at Felsted School in Essex, England from 1935 to 1942. He read Modern Languages at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, for one year in 1942 before being called up to the British Army.

Military service Kendall joined the Coldstream Guards where he was commissioned as a lieutenant. He arrived in Normandy ten days after D-Day but was wounded about a month later. In 1945, he was among 100,000 British military personnel sent to Palestine. In 1946, he was demobilised from the Guards as a captain.

Broadcasting career After leaving the army, Kendall returned to Oxford to complete his Modern Language degree. He hoped to join the Foreign Office or working for an bank overseas but instead worked as a school teacher for a term. As he was employed on a freelance basis by the BBC, he also worked as an actor for a repertory company based in Crewe, and briefly at the menswear retailer Austin Reed in Regent Street, where he met actor John Inman and offered him a job in the Crewe theatre company.

Kendall became known for his elegant dress sense and was voted best-dressed newsreader by Style International and No.1 newscaster by Daily Mirror readers in 1979. He read his last news bulletin in March 1961 before he was moved to the BBC's programming planning department at his own request. Kendall resigned his staff job on 17 July 1961 and became a freelance broadcaster. He was the compere of the quiz show Pit Your Wits from 1961 to 1963, and he co-presented the ATV fortnightly current affairs and magazine programme The Time—the Place and the Camera with Nan Winton. From 1961 to 1969, he was a freelance newsreader, working occasionally for ITN and presenting Southern Television's Day By Day. He also made cameo appearances as himself in television dramas; he featured in the 1966 Adam Adamant episode "The Doomsday Plan", in which he is kidnapped and impersonated, and he also appeared in the 1966 Doctor Who serial The War Machines.

He rejoined BBC News in 1969, and finally retired from newsreading on 23 December 1981; Kendall was unable to read his final news bulletin because he slipped on ice at a park in Ealing and broke his arm. Kendall's retirement allowed him to work on the popular Channel 4 programme Treasure Hunt throughout its first run (1982–1989), which featured Anneka Rice as a "skyrunner". He also presented the television programme Songs of Praise, and the daytime nostalgia programme Whatever Happened to..?. In June 1995, he opened a restaurant called "Kendall's Restaurant" in Cowes, Isle of Wight, but sold it a year later. Kendall read a news bulletin for the first anniversary of the L!VE TV channel in June 1996.

In 2010 he took part in BBC's series The Young Ones in which six well-known people in their 70s and 80s attempt to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.

Personal life Kendall lived in Cowes on the Isle of Wight with his partner Mark Fear, with whom he had been since 1989. Fear was the owner of a marine art gallery and a beekeeper. The couple entered into a civil partnership in 2006.

Death Kendall died on 14 December 2012, following a stroke a few weeks previously.

Filmography The Reckless Moment (1949) – Man (uncredited) The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) – TV Newscaster (uncredited) Scotland Yard Evidence in Concrete (1961) – TV news reader on Decca television screen The Brain (1962) – TV Newscaster (uncredited) Doctor Who: The War Machines (1966) – Himself (Credited, TV cameo) They Came from Beyond Space (1967) – Commentator The Exorcism – from the Dead of Night BBC TV series. (1972) (Credited) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – BBC-12 Announcer (uncredited)