Gordon Honeycombe

Died: October 9, 2015

Gordon Honeycombe, who has died in Australia aged 79, was a newsreader and writer best known for his time on ITN and the breakfast programme TV-am, although he also had success as a novelist, playwright and actor.

In the 1960s and 70s, he was the main face of the daily television news on ITN before quitting to concentrate on his writing of fiction and non-fiction. However, in 1984, he returned to newsreading as the main news presenter of TV-am. He found the schedule gruelling (he had to get out of bed at 4.30am and presented seven bulletins a day). After five years, he had had enough.

Born in Karachi, the son of an oil salesman, and educated at Edinburgh Academy and Oxford, Honeycombe broke into news presenting with a display of extraordinary chutzpah. He was trying to make a living as an actor, but saw an Oxford contemporary on the television reading the news and thought: I could do that. He wrote to ITN, got an audition and with two weeks was reading the news on television. He stayed there for 12 years.

Honeycombe had, in fact, found some success as an actor and playwright, working for Richard Ingrams' theatre company and winning an audition for Laurence Olivier. He may not won the job with Olivier, but the Royal Shakespeare Company did stage his play The Miracles and gave him some work in minor acting roles.

By the 1970s, Honeycombe was one of the most recognised faces on television, but by the late 70s, he was ready to move on and concentrate on his writing. His first novel Neither the Sea nor the Sand was published in 1969 and made into a film with Susan Hampshire and he also wrote some non-fiction including Red Watch in 1976, which told the story of the fire service.

It was Red Watch that helped speed up Honeycombe's departure from ITN. In 1977, the Fire Brigades Union was out on strike over pay and, in a piece for a national newspaper, the newsreader expressed his support for them. "It is sad that the rights of these men to a better wage have been ignored, not just this year or during the last decade, but for 100 years since the brigade was formed," he said. "There is only one humane solution. Give the firemen back their self-respect and pride. Give them the money." He was immediately suspended by his bosses at ITN, although he had already arranged to leave.

As a writer, Honeycombe's work appeared at the Old Vic and the Edinburgh Festival (he also wrote a best-selling book about the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana) but in 1984, he returned to newsreading at TV-am and stayed for five years. He also wrote TV-am's Official Celebration of the Royal Wedding in 1986, a book about the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

After leaving TV-am, he did some work as an actor, including a tour of Run for Your Wife in 1990, but he eventually retired when he was 53 and emigrated to Australia where he continued to work as a voice artist. He also returned to the UK in 2005 to co-present an edition of ITV's Evening News with Mary Nightingale to mark the channel's 50th anniversary.

A statement on the TV-am website said: "Gordon had recently celebrated his birthday but had been ill for some time. As his health declined he spent a few weeks in a specialist care home, but was alert and doing crosswords up to the very end."