Post-Crossroads
After the termination of her contact, Gordon appeared in Gypsy at Leicester's Haymarket Theatre followed by a revival of Irving Berlin's musical Call Me Madam touring the Midlands and then at the Victoria Palace Theatre where it ran for only 88 performances. Her last stage appearance was in The Boyfriend at Plymouth's Theatre Royal produced by Roger Redfarn (she took ill during the run and had to be replaced).
In an interview she gave the TV Times in 1981 she announced she may, once her stage work had come to an end, take up the offer of returning to presenting. In the same 1981 TV Times interview she commented that a future role as a breakfast television presenter was being negotiated. She would however not return to television full-time due to her theatre commitments. Speaking in 1984 she said "I did several mornings on TV-am a week or so ago. And I have been recording some programmes for my local radio station. But I would like to do more television - and I am ready for it". However she fell ill, and that promised more regular presenting role at TV-am never materialised because of her failing health.
For many years in the 1960s and early 1970 Gordon lived in a large white-washed country house called Weir End, near Ross-on-Wye, beside the A40 road to Monmouth. She never married, although a fiance later became a leading lawyer. She retired to her home in Birmingham, where she died in 1985 of cancer. She is buried in the churchyard of St Mary/s Church in Ross-on-Wye.
Tony Adams, who played Adam Chance in the series of Crossroads, commented in 1985 just after her death that "There has never been a star of Crossroads, although Nolly was Crossroads."
Read more about this topic: Noele Gordon