Joan Noele Gordon (25 December 1919 – 14 April 1985) was an English actress and television presenter, of Scottish descent.

[1] She played the role of Meg Mortimer (originally Richardson, later Ryder) in the long-running British soap opera Crossroads from 1964 to 1981, with a brief return in 1983.

After attending convent school in Ilford, she was taught to dance by Maude Wells and later spent several years living in Southend-on-Sea.

She made her first public appearance at the East Ham Palace and shortly afterwards, sang "Dear Little Jammy Face" at a restaurant in London.

She was a soubrette in musical theatre roles during the 1940s and 1950s, and made her West End debut at the London Hippodrome in 1943 as Maggie Watson in Cole Porter's Let's Face It!

[8] She returned to that theatre later that year as Louise Panache (aka "Panny") in the musical The Lisbon Story from June 1943 to July 1944.

[9][10] Her stage career came to a halt in 1955, when she joined Associated Television in London, where she presented their first-ever programme, The Weekend Show.

Her first television appearance for ATV in the Midlands, Tea With Noele Gordon, was the first popular ITV chat show, and while presenting this series, she became the first woman to interview a British Prime Minister,[11] when Harold Macmillan was in office.

Initially commissioned as an emergency schedule filler, the show became so successful that Gordon gave up her executive position to concentrate on presenting.

Gordon's return as Meg was devised by the new producer, Phillip Bowman, who himself ended the involvement with the series of regulars Ronald Allen and Sue Lloyd.

In an interview she gave to TV Times in 1981, Gordon announced that she might, once her stage work had come to an end, take up the offer of returning to presenting.

"[21] A televised drama, Nolly, with Helena Bonham Carter playing Gordon,[22] written by Russell T Davies and directed by Peter Hoar, was made by ITV Studios.