The famous journalist was born at 5 Sydenham Terrace (now demolished) in Newcastle, and was no doubt there when the celebrated novelist Rosamond Lehmann was living at No. 72. He attended the Newcastle Preparatory School in Eslington Terrace, opposite the Royal Grammar School. It was at this time that Nancy Spain (q.v.) the future journalist and celebrity, threw him into the pond in what is now Exhibition Park. Later he was a pupil at Durham School.
Hardcastle worked as a junior reporter for the Shields Gazette, Newcastle Journal and the North Shields Evening News before reaching Fleet Street via Sheffield. He became a well-known reporter on the Daily Mail and a household name when he presented The World at One for BBC radio, as well as the programme now known as PM. Like Oliver Goldsmith, Hardcastle wrote like an angel and tended to talk like poor Poll. His brain was often in advance of his mouth, unusual in a BBC speaker at that time, and it became something of an exercise at times to follow his breathless diction. He was the first broadcaster to pronounce 'verbatim' with the stress on the first syllable.