UPDATE: TV LEGEND Bert Newton is recovering in intensive care after undergoing a successful quadruple heart bypass operation.
The five-and-a-half-hour surgery on the 74-year-old star went "according to plan", Melbourne's Epworth Hospital has confirmed.
"Bert Newton's heart surgery has been completed. His surgeon said everything proceeded according to plan and he is very happy with how things went," Epworth said in a statement.
"Bert is now resting comfortably in intensive care. We are keeping a close eye on him in the ICU."
His wife, Patti, told reporters outside the hospital that she had seen Newton, "kissed him on the forehead and will leave him be".
"I just went in and saw him for a second and he is not a pretty sight at the moment but hopefully that will get better," she said.
"(He has) tubes everywhere but that is how, I suppose, you get a heart working again.
She said earlier this morning that she was feeling "fragile" but the couple had a positive attitude to his getting better.
"We've been together more than I've been without him," she said. "We've been married for 38 years and probably have been together for 40 something years.
"So when something happens to your best friend, it affects you greatly."
The television and stage veteran had a heart scare earlier this year in Singapore, where he was performing eight shows a week in the musical Wicked.
He spent a week in hospital. Doctors cleared a blockage in his heart.
Newton began his showbiz career as a 15-year-old junior announcer on Melbourne radio station 3XY and began his long-term association with the Nine network in 1959 when he hosted In Melbourne Today.
He soon made regular appearances on In Melbourne Tonight as he struck up a partnership with Graham Kennedy and has been a fixture on Australian television and stage ever since.
He has four gold Logies and was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame in 1988.
Read more on The Australian.
