A close friend of Australia?s richest man, Kerry Packer, has paid tribute to the media tycoon who died last week aged 68.

Movie mogul Bruce Gordon, who has lived in Bermuda since the 1980s, grew up in the same Australian neighbourhood as Mr. Packer and remained a good friend for more 50 years.

And it was the philanthropic gesture by the Australian media boss to ensure every ambulance in New South Wales was equipped with heart-attack defibrillator equipment that led Mr. Gordon to offer a similar gift to the people of Bermuda.

Speaking from his home on the Island, Mr. Gordon said: ?Kerry was a man amongst men and he will not be forgotten. He was a great newspaper proprietor and television man.

?He had a great wit, a real one off. They broke the mould when they made him.?

Mr. Gordon tried to entice the tycoon to visit Bermuda, but Mr. Packer?s continually busy schedule prevented him from making the trip. However, the two men met during Mr. Gordon?s regular visits to Australia where he remains chief advisor to the WIN television network.

Remembering his old friend, he said: ?When Kerry was a young boy his father (Sir) Frank ran Channel 9 in Australia and Kerry would go down to the studio and ask if they had any new westerns and then he?d sit there and watch them.

?I knew Kerry and his older brother Clyde when I was growing up. Kerry took over at Channel 9 when his father died and made it a huge success. But he was not only a terrific TV man, he did an incredible job for cricket bringing in the coloured team kits and floodlit cricket.?

Mr. Gordon, the former head of Paramount Pictures international sales division, was with Mr. Packer when the Australian multibillionaire made his revolutionary decision to change the way cricket was televised.

?I was in his house when (?Crocodile Dundee? actor) Paul Hogan?s agent John Cornell said to him that he should be putting cricket on TV and I suggested he do for cricket what TV had done for golf.?

Mr. Packer ran with the idea and, after well-publicised legal challenges, took the sport into a new era of prosperity with high salaries for players, night-time games and colourful clothing after signing up many of the world?s best players for a 1977 World Series. For all his success, and his love of high roller casino gambling, Mr. Packer often preferred to live relatively low key.

Mr. Gordon said: ?One time he won so much at a casino in London that they gave him a Bentley as a present, but he simply gave it away to a friend.

?And as a young man, when he was in his 20s and I was eight years older we went to a garage and he bought a simple black Ford Holden car without any special number plates and we?d go out. He liked to be incognito and low key.?

In 1990 Mr. Packer suffered a heart attack and was ?dead? for seven minutes until he was revived by an ambulance crew using a defibrillator.

When the media tycoon later learned that he had his lucky stars to thank because he had been attended to by the one and only ambulance in New South Wales equipped with a defibrillator he immediately donated $2 million to ensure that all NSW ambulances carried defibrillators. ?A few years ago, being a plagiarist, I came up with the same thing,? said Mr. Gordon. ?I checked around (Bermuda) and found out there weren?t any defibrillators so I gave nine new defibrillators to the hospital and then more went to the Airport and the Fire Service.?

Although Mr. Gordon is not able to attend his friend?s funeral he may go to a memorial service in Australia early in the New Year.