Richard Baker, who introduced the first BBC television news bulletin in 1954 and became a leading news presenter, has died at the age of 93.
Known for his rich, deep tones and calm, avuncular manner, Baker was closely associated for many years with the BBC’s classical music coverage. He presented the annual Last Night of the Proms and hosted programmes on Radio 2 and Radio 4, beginning his broadcasting career in 1950 on the Third Programme, later to become Radio 3.
The BBC director general, Tony Hall, said Baker was “at the forefront of the creation of the modern news presenter”. He said: “Later, he became a great advocate for classical music, presenting many much-loved programmes. But more than that, he was quite simply a lovely and charming man. Our sympathies are with his many friends and family.”
The veteran BBC correspondent John Simpson tweeted: “Richard Baker … was one of the finest newsreaders of modern times: highly intelligent, thoughtful, gentle, yet tough in defence of his principles.”
A popular choice as narrator, Baker provided the voice of children’s television shows such as Mary, Mungo and Midge, as well as recording an acclaimed version of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.
“[He] had one of the great microphone voices of recent times,” said the Gramophone critic Jeremy Nicholas three years ago. “His narration, ideally balanced against the orchestra, bears repeated listening.”
The son of a plasterer from Willesden, north London, Baker went to grammar school and studied history and modern languages at Cambridge, where he also enjoyed amateur dramatics. His undergraduate years were interrupted by the second world war, when he served on a minesweeper with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
Baker married Margaret, a childhood friend, in 1961. His love of performance occasionally burst through the newsreader’s veneer of respectability. He made three guest appearances on Monty Python’s Flying Circus and became a regular on the panel game Face the Music.
In 1977, he was among a troupe of BBC presenters to take part in a memorable Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show production of the show song There is Nothing Like a Dame.
In recent years Baker moved into a retirement home, where he found a novel way of settling in. Each day he would select the interesting headlines from the day’s papers and read them aloud to his fellow residents at six o’clock.
Baker’s son James said his father died on Saturday morning at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford.
