Reg Grundy

Reg Grundy AC OBE (1925–2016), television producer, was the director, founder and major shareholder of RG Capital Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd. Having served as a pay clerk in the army in Sydney from 1941 to 1946, Grundy was a radio broadcaster until 1960, when he approached Channel 9 with an idea for a game show he called Wheel of Fortune. He became its host and producer, and soon initiated a variety of game and quiz shows such as Sale of the Century, which concluded nightly with the booming words ‘This has been a Reg Grundy Production’. On the success of these and other family-oriented shows including Neighbours and Prisoner Grundy became the Chairman and Chief Executive of Grundy Worldwide Ltd, the world’s largest independent TV production and distribution company. A long-time resident of Bermuda with his wife, Neighbours star and historical novelist Joy Chambers-Grundy, he sold Grundy Worldwide to Pearson, a British media group, in 1995. Apart from his Companionship of the Order of Australia, Grundy received an honorary doctorate from the University of Queensland in 2004 and is honoured, amongst Australians of middle age, in the household colloquial term for underpants (‘undies’), ‘reg grundies’.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Dr John Chambers 2003
© Nigel Boonham