Margie Gardner: Socialite and antiques dealer whose acquired haughty tones hid a kind and generous heart

She possessed the ability to laugh uproariously at the misfortunes of other people

The Gardners on their wedding day: Andrew became the best-paid newsreader of his generation

The diminutive widow of the famously tall and amiable newsreader, Andrew Gardner, Margie Gardner was born with a priceless gift – the ability to laugh uproariously at the misfortunes of other people. She was also in possession of a kind heart, although sometimes she regulated it with a rod of iron. Her career was mainly as the wife of one of the most quietly-sung broadcasters of his day; a task for which she took elocution lessons. These elevated her accent, already educated enough at Stratford House, into something startlingly cut-glass, even by the standards of the 1967 Grosvenor House receptions that launched ITN’s News At Ten, and for which her idiosyncratic tones were purposely formulated.

Secondly, her role was as matriarch to their burgeoning family of boys and seeing to their fine Kentish hall house near Hawkhurst. There she once gave one of her classic dressings-down to a very unpunctual builder, somewhat reminiscent of Sybil Fawlty berating the hapless Mr O’Reilly, but Margie did enjoy her builder’s excuse immensely: he was tiny, his wife was not; she’d cornered him near Bromley High Street; cue a tongue-lashing after which she’d seized the keys to his car and dropped them through a grill in the road. His miserable lament, ”I don’t understand women…” was gleefully added to Margie’s repertoire of stories.

An unconventional socialite, she went out of her way not to proclaim it – she had her husband’s driver drop her around the corner from the restaurants where she often lunched during the halcyon days of Andrew’s tenure at Thames TV, where he became the highest-paid newsreader of his generation.

Margie had met Andrew in Africa. They married in Salisbury, Rhodesia, where he read the news for NBC. Animals were a big factor in their life there, often wildish ones, including Herbert the crocodile, who had to go because he wouldn’t allow her to vacuum around him. Without telephones to assist them, Andrew would let her know by television if he would be on time for dinner by closing the programme “…for NBC News” but if late, he would end with “the Nyasaland Broadcasting Corporation.” No one else noticed the difference.

They spent just under four years in Africa where one son, Mark, was born and another, Adrian, followed soon after they had returned to South-east London – “Bick-ley in the Bent-ley!” she would squawk – but always preferring to drive herself, in a sequence of estate Volvos which she could park on a sixpence. She also clocked up vast distances in her Honda Civic, driving regularly to Venice and back on one of her preferred camping holidays. The family of boys increased with the birth of Maxwell (who died in 2005), then Adam, by which time the family had moved to rural Kent.

For a time she was hands-on in the running of their fruit farm, then with a friend she began dealing in antiques, both for fun and to obtain them more cheaply. To the question, “What can you do for me on this table?” she might helpfully reply, in the snootiest voice imaginable “I could do a tap dance!” (roaring with haughty laughter). Every time they showed at an antiques fair, she foretold the object that day which would be subject to the whim of the punters known as “the three Ps” – “Pick up, put down and piss off!”

She seemed fearless. When she was right she was right; when she was wrong, well… She could de-gamma the ferocious parent of another child, if it was in defence of that child from unnecessary harshness. She was often kind, regularly taking in borders from school during half term if their parents lived too far for them to fly home for the week.

Yet both she and Andrew, who was so genial, were sometimes tough and possessed some unusual parenting skills. It wasn’t that she didn’t deserve her children’s respect, it was more that she would command it regardless. As a grandmother, it was a different story: she was adoring and generous and her frugality, wishing to budget everything – hence camping and caravanning – went for a conspicuous Burton.

But by then she had lost Andrew – whose trenchant needs had claimed so much of her energy that she was unable to expend enough on the boys – mid-air, en route for Madeira. On arrival, Margie didn’t fully realise that Andrew was dead and wanted to go with him in the ambulance, but was gently dissuaded. Afterwards she was brave, but life was not the same. She had lost her soul mate.

At her funeral, it was a surprise to find that she was a churchgoer, albeit of the once-a-year brigade. The music she had picked for her own service terminated in “My Way” by Frank Sinatra, a ballad to her inflexibility, you might say, but as the lyrics played out, at least part of the congregation must have cast their minds back 16 years, to Andrew’s memorial in St Martin-in-the-Fields. He had asked for “Je Ne Regrette Rien” to play him out – suddenly it seemed as though each picked for the other and given us a conversation from their private eternity.

Margaret Norma Drain, antiques dealer and socialite: born 20 February 1935; married Andrew Gardner (died 1999; three sons, and one son deceased); died Pembury, Kent 5 October 2015.