Broadcaster

born May 23 1926

died February 1 2017

DESMOND Carrington, who has died aged 90, was a broadcaster who presented one of Radio 2’s longest-running shows, The Music Goes Round. His radio career began in the Second World War and spanned more than 70 years.

Carrington’s longevity and popularity as a broadcaster was comparable with Nicholas Parsons, David Jacobs and Jimmy Young; like them, he was chiefly associated with what was once “the Light Programme”. By the time he finally retired last year, Carrington’s show was the only regular slot on Radio 2 predominantly devoted to the kind of music that had once been the station’s staple fare.

Though he would happily range across genres – and his habit of taking a theme for each edition of his programme gave him good excuse to – the majority of the songs that Carrington played were mainstream hits of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s which were not much affected by the invention of rock and roll.

A typical playlist might have featured artists such as Dame Vera Lynn, the Inkspots, Jim Reeves, Alma Cogan, Max Bygraves, Noel Coward, Dorothy Squires, Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole. If he were feeling particularly daring, Diana Ross, ABBA or Phil Collins might also get an outing.

Even when he devoted one of his last shows to the 1970s, it avoided what many might have thought the typical productions of that decade, preferring Demis Roussos, The New Seekers, Perry Como and Shirley Bassey. Several songs on that edition were drawn from Unforgettable Hits of the 70s, which had been put together by Readers’ Digest.

Perhaps rather to the surprise of the BBC’s management, there proved to be a sizeable audience for this material, which was otherwise largely absent from the airwaves. In fact, Carrington’s audience grew steadily; a couple of years ago it had reached around 865,000, a very impressive showing for an early evening slot on a Friday.

The credit for this was due to Carrington’s modest and unassuming manner, and his obvious warmth as a broadcaster. He was fond of thanking listeners for “letting us into your home”, and of asides about his cat, Sam or “Golden-Paws”. Just before his regular sign-off – “Bye, for now” – he would often tell the cat he would be allowed out in a minute.

A major factor in this homely style was the fact that Carrington was, as he frequently reminded his audience, broadcasting live from his own home in Perthshire. His partner, Dave Aylott, also acted as his producer, and the pair would select the music for the programme together, usually around a broad theme, such as “Sleep”, “Holidays”, or “Time”.

In earlier years, he had been conventionally based in a BBC studio and the show was pre-recorded. But on August 31 1997, when Diana, Princess of Wales died, Carrington and the BBC agreed that it would be inappropriate to put out the prepared show, and he broadcast live instead.

Desmond Herbert Carrington was born on May 23 1926 at Bromley in Kent. He began his career as an actor, appearing aged16 in Goodbye Mr Chips at the Theatre Royal Nottingham, opposite Noel Johnson, the radio voice of Dick Barton, Special Agent. The following year he was called up to the Army, and posted to Northern Ireland. Towards the end of the war, he was sent to the officers’ training school at Mhow in India.

He was commissioned there and first encountered Radio SEAC, the British Forces Broadcaster based at Colombo, in what was then Ceylon. Carrington managed to persuade his superiors that he had experience as a broadcaster (though he had none), and made his first appearance on the airwaves from Rangoon, Burma, in 1945.

On his arrival in Colombo, the first person he met was Petty Officer David Jacobs, who went on to become a noted broadcaster and a lifelong friend. After demob, Carrington returned to Britain and picked up his acting career. To the stage he added film (appearing in The People at Number 19, 1949) and television, where he played a prefect in Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School (1959).

He became something of a TV heart-throb as Dr Anderson in Emergency Ward 10, the 1950s precursor of Casualty, on which he featured from 1958 to 1964, appearing in more than 230 episodes, to an audience of almost 20 million.

In the late 1960s he also popped up in an episode of Softly, Softly (the forerunner of Z-Cars) and appeared with the young Phil Collins in the children’s film Calamity the Cow. Besides his role as Dr Anderson, though, Carrington was best known as the spokesman for Daz detergent, who encouraged housewives to swap their ordinary washing powder for its supposedly superior qualities.

But he also stuck with and expanded his radio work, first as a member of the BBC Drama Rep Company and then as a freelance producer for the BBC and the fledgling Radio Luxembourg. In the 1950s he helped to devise and present Movie-Go-Round, a fixture of the Light Programme’s Sunday afternoon schedule, and he was a frequent presenter on Album Time and Housewives’ Choice.

By the end of the 1960s, Carrington had largely swapped television acting for radio presenting, and appearances on panel and quiz shows, though he continued with stage work, making appearances in productions of Crown Matrimonial and Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw. He was a frequent host for live orchestral concerts and the regular compère of the Mountbatten Festival of Music at the Royal Albert Hall from 1991 to 2002.

His own show on Radio 2 (as the Light Programme had become) began in October 1981 as All Time Greats, and was broadcast on Sunday lunchtimes. It was tremendously popular, and in 1991 he was voted Radio Personality of the Year. He moved to the Ochil Hills in 1995, and set up a studio and his extensive personal record library – comprising some quarter of a million tracks – at his home. In 2004, the show was renamed The Music Goes Round and moved to a Tuesday night; latterly it was on Fridays at 7pm, until Carrington finally retired in October.

In later years, he had suffered health problems including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. On Christmas Day 2015, he suffered heart failure for the second time. Though he later said “I’m eternally grateful to the superb doctors and nurses of the Scottish NHS for saving my life”, at the time he returned to his programme only 10 days later, telling neither his listeners nor the BBC that he had been ill.

Desmond Carrington died on February 1, the day Radio 2 had been due to broadcast a programme celebrating his broadcasting career. He is survived by his partner, Dave Aylott.

Andrew McKie