14 Facts About Gilbert Harding

Gilbert Charles Harding was a British journalist and radio and television personality.

Gilbert Harding made a couple of comedy records in the 1950s.

Gilbert Harding's father died in 1911 at the age of thirty following an appendicitis operation, and so his mother sent their son to board at the Royal Orphanage of Wolverhampton, "an excellent academy" which prepared him for his subsequent education at Queens' College, Cambridge.

Gilbert Harding returned to Britain and worked as a policeman in Bradford, before taking a position as The Times correspondent in Cyprus.

Gilbert Harding was notorious for his irascibility and was at one time characterised in the tabloid press as "the rudest man in Britain".

An incident on an early broadcast started this trend when Gilbert Harding became annoyed with a contestant, and told him that he was getting bored with him.

Gilbert Harding became increasingly unable to move anywhere in public without being accosted by adoring viewers.

At this point, in replying in the affirmative, Gilbert Harding's voice began to break and his eyes watered.

Freeman later said he had not anticipated the effect this would have; Gilbert Harding had witnessed his mother's death in 1954.

Freeman appeared to be unaware that Gilbert Harding was referring to his mother, for later in the interview he asserted that Gilbert Harding's mother was still alive.

Gilbert Harding admitted in the programme that his bad manners and temper were "indefensible".

Gilbert Harding died a few weeks after the Face to Face programme was broadcast, collapsing outside Broadcasting House as he was about to climb into a taxi.

Behind Gilbert Harding's gruff exterior there was a lonely and complex man who constantly donated to charity, visited the sick and helped many in need.

In 2002, Harding was played by Edward Woodward, with Jonathan Cullen as his secretary, in Leonard Preston's play Goodbye Gilbert Harding, which portrayed the final decade of Harding's life.