He read Modern Languages at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, for one year before being called up to the British Army.

[3] 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.

[4] 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.

[7] 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".

Soon after retirement from news reading, Kendall lent his voice to the BBC Micro as part of Acorn Computers' hardware speech synthesis system.

[8] 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.