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Peter Harvey dies after battle with cancer

Veteran television journalist Peter Harvey has died aged 68 after a four-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

With four decades of reporting behind him, Harvey was a stalwart of Australian journalism.

A Channel 9 journalist since 1975, he brought the news into lounge rooms across Australia, his deep baritone sign-off, "Peter Harvey [pause], Canberra," becoming a catchphrase, admired and mimicked by many.

During his time as a journalist, Peter Harvey covered most of the key events in Australian and world history.

As a member of the Canberra press gallery, he saw prime ministers Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard come and go, earning the respect of politicians of all parties.

He was the only Australian reporter with American forces when the first Gulf War broke out, reported on the sacking of Gough Whitlam in 1975, and travelled the globe, reporting from the White House, 10 Downing Street, and The Kremlin.

Fellow political correspondent Laurie Oakes remembers him as being "extraordinarily versatile" and able to "ad lib material where most of us would need a script".

"Peter Harvey was a fierce competitor when we worked for rival networks, and a valued colleague in the 13 years we were together in the Nine Network's Canberra Bureau," Oakes told ABC News Online.

"He has been called 'a journalist's journalist'. Peter was best known for his time in Canberra, covering politics with distinction and earning the respect of politicians from all parties. But he was extraordinarily versatile - a war correspondent before his long stint in the national capital, and then turning his hand to everything from showbiz to crime reporting to commentary for 60 Minutes after transferring to Sydney in 1997.

"He was a talented broadcaster, able to ad lib material where most of us would need a script. One of the things I most admired about him was the way he mentored younger colleagues. Peter's was a generous spirit. He's a real loss to journalism."

Born in Bondi in 1944, Peter Harvey came from a long line of journalists.

He began his career as a copy boy at The Daily Telegraph under Sir Frank Packer's ownership. In a 2013 interview, Harvey recounted how the entire newsroom would regularly be fired by Sir Frank after a bad day at the races. After retiring to the pub, they’d wait to be reinstated by the duty editor and then hurry to get the newspaper to the presses in time for the next day.

"Then is exactly like now," he said of those times. "It's a job you have to do as well and professionally as possible ... and you just do it."

It was as a 19-year-old cub reporter that Harvey’s coverage of a 1964 gangland shooting won him a Walkley award, setting his career on an upward trajectory.

Reading an article in the American Newsweek magazine referring to the city of "Sidney" prompted Harvey to offer himself as the magazine's Sydney stringer, a job which he did for a period before being sent to cover the Vietnam conflict.

"Vietnam taught me to be very careful about all sorts of things," he told Jane Hutcheon in an interview for the ABC's One Plus One program aired in February this year.

"I saw all the famous American TV correspondents walking around in their combat suits so I had to go and buy one of these things," he said of his arrival in Saigon.

"Then I went and bought a gun. Fortunately, before I did anything else, I went back to the Newsweek bureau. They all just recoiled in horror and they said, 'You're asking to be shot dead! What's the matter with you? What you do is you get rid of all that stuff you’re wearing. You go back to your hotel. You buy the biggest, loudest Hawaiian shirt you can find. You make sure you never, ever wear anything that looks like a gun belt, and you look like a tourist.'

"It was great advice."

It was while in Vietnam that Harvey became aware of the impact of television on American audiences.

"There was no doubt from the reaction you were seeing that people were shocked, stunned, appalled, horrified... The full range of emotions,” he told Hutcheon.

She recalls the white braces he wore under his sports coat the day of that interview and how it made her smile. After weekly chemotherapy treatments, he was gaunt and frail.

"With a Peter Harvey report, you are not aware of the reporting," she said.

"He is a storyteller who opens up the story like a parcel. And so it was with our interview. In an age where we are good at recounting our achievements, we often don't speak of the meaning of our lives when death is close by. Peter did. He reached out to people of all ages, not just those who have suffered and are suffering."

After stints as a radio reporter with 2UE and 2GB, Harvey and his wife Anne took a boat to London, where he briefly working for BBC Radio and The Express before moving to The Guardian, where he picked up a British Reporter of the Year award.

Approached in 1975 by Channel Nine news management to run their new Canberra bureau, Harvey began what was to be a distinguished career with the commercial network, including a long stint as its news director.

During his interview with Hutcheon, Harvey recalled the emergence of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments as highly significant, saying he had been very impressed with both men.

"[Malcolm] Fraser never used his colossal political muscle to say "fix this", whereas Keating and Hawke did: superannuation, floating the dollar, financial changes, education... changes that we still live with were seen through by Hawke and Keating," he said.

Mr Fraser said Harvey was "a most distinguished journalist" throughout his life.

"He was always fair, he was accurate, he reported many major stories," he said.

"He always maintained the highest possible standards of his profession. Personally I had the highest possible regard for him."

Harvey and his wife Anne were in Venice last year to mark their 45th wedding anniversary when he realised he was ill.

"One morning, Anne looked over at me and said, 'You've gone the colour of a post-it pad!" Harvey recalled.

He said the "really good part" of the experience was an unplanned motorboat ride through the canals of Venice to hospital, where jaundice was diagnosed.

When the couple returned to Australia Harvey was given the news that he had pancreatic cancer.

"No-one, least of all me, is giving up hope," he told Hutcheon.

"It's in my nature to have the glass half-full, not half-empty.

"As soon as we're able to, Anne and I are going back to Florence and Venice to finish this thing off."

Peter Harvey is survived by his wife Anne and his children Claire and Adam, both also journalists.

Unfortunately, I believe that pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal; The only person I've ever heard of surviving it is Colin Friels (diagnosed in the late '90s).

RIP Peter Harvey, and sorry for your loss too Kirkbright.

That's sad, 8'z. I figure you to be a few years older than some of the "spring chickens" around here, so I gather if you lost a "school mate", you must have known her for quite some time. It's hard to lose someone you've been close to, for so long, so quickly.

Are You Being Served? star Frank Thornton dies

Actor Frank Thornton died in his sleep in the early hours of Saturday morning, his agent, David Daly, has said. He was 92.

Born Frank Thornton Ball in Dulwich, south-east London, he was educated at Alleyn's school.

He knew he wanted to be an actor from about the age of five, but first became an insurance clerk, taking drama classes at night at the London School of Dramatic Art.

As a child, he described himself as "a bit of a loner, not one of the lads. I think I was probably a bit of a prig because I seem to have been stuck with this supercilious persona for as long as I can remember."

From his first professional appearance, in Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears in Co Tipperary, he swiftly graduated to companies led by the actor-managers Donald Wolfit – where he met his future wife, Beryl Evans – and John Gielgud.

After reaching the West End and appearing in the first production of Rattigan's Flare Path.

During World War 2 he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, reaching the rank of Flying Officer.

After demob, he divided his time between repertory and the West End before his television career took off in 1960 with Michael Bentine's frenetic It's a Square World.

Thornton had more than 60 film credits, including Victim (1961), The Dock Brief (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (with Zero Mostel, 1966), A Flea in Her Ear (with Rex Harrison, 1968), The Bed Sitting Room (1969), The Old Curiosity Shop (1995) and Gosford Park (2001), as well as the Disney TV adaptation of Great Expectations (1991). His last appearance came in the 2012 film version of Run for Your Wife.

He made regular appearances alongside such comic greats as Tony Hancock and Eric Sykes, and appearing on The Benny Hill Show, The Two Ronnies and even The Goodies where he memorably appeared attired as a punk rocker.

But in a career spanning seven decades he is best remembered as the dapper floor-walker Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? which ran from 1973 to 1985 and regularly attracted audiences of 20 million. Captain Peacock was ideal casting for Thornton, who went on to appear in all 10 series, two movies and the short lived spin off Grace & Favour.

He is survived by Beryl, his wife of 67 years, daughter Jane and their three grandchildren.

Harry Potter actor Richard Griffiths dies

Actor Richard Griffiths, who starred in the Harry Potter movies and Withnail and I, has died at the age of 65 after complications following heart surgery.

Griffiths enjoyed a long career of success on film and on TV, but also on the stage where he was a Tony-winning character actor.

He was best known for playing Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films and Uncle Monty in Withnail and I.

TV roles included playing a cookery-loving detective in Pie in the Sky.

And on stage, his most acclaimed performance was as the charismatic teacher Hector in Alan Bennett's The History Boys, a role he recreated in the 2006 film version.

He was appointed an OBE in the 2008 New Year Honours.

He was born in Thornaby-on-Tees, North Yorkshire, and left school at 15 but later returned to education to study drama, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He married Heather Gibson in 1980 after they met during a production of Lady Windermere's Fan in 1973.

His early TV career saw him land bit parts in series such as Minder, The Sweeney and Bergerac, while he also played small parts in major movies such as Chariots of Fire, Superman II and Gandhi

But it was his role as the predatory Uncle Monty in Withnail And I - which has become of one of the biggest cult classics in British cinema history - which made him a fan favourite.

His Harry Potter co-star Daniel Radcliffe - who also appeared on stage with him in Equus - was among the first to pay tribute, saying: "Richard was by my side during two of the most important moments of my career. I was proud to know him."

Sir Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, said Griffiths's unexpected death would devastate his "army of friends".

He said: "Richard Griffiths wasn't only one of the most loved and recognisable British actors - he was also one of the very greatest.

"His performance in The History Boys was quite overwhelming: a masterpiece of wit, delicacy, mischief and desolation, often simultaneously."