- He made front-page headlines in 1974 when he refused, on live TV, to appear on the episode of This Is Your Life (1955) devoted to him. When Eamonn Andrews surprised him with his big red book, Gordon yelled "Oh balls!" and fled from the studio. Andrews pursued him and persuaded him to change his mind, so the programme was then recorded and transmitted the following week, with a stand-by episode about Sam Kydd being transmitted in place of the live Richard Gordon one.
- He appeared in both the first and third of the "Doctor" comedy films adapted from his novels, in both cases playing a hospital anesthetist - something he was in real life until he became successful enough to be a full-time writer.
- He studied medicine at the University of Cambridge.
- His writing career was inspired by his love of the works of humorist P.G. Wodehouse. He worked for the British Medical Journal in the late 1940s, joking that he "learned to write convincing fiction" while running the obituary section.
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