Ronald Fletcher, radio announcer, born July 10, 1910, died February 6, 1996

RONALD FLETCHER was a BBC announcer of the old fashioned breed, whose precise, well modulated tones lent authority to whatever he was required to say. It is a vanished art and a vanished way of speaking.

But it is for his sideline career as a foil to comedians like Ted Ray and Bernard Braden, and as the man who read the quotes in Quote.......Unquote for nearly 20 years that he will be remembered. There was something innately hilarious in the way Braden, in particular in his mould-breaking radio shows, Breakfast with Braden and Bedtime with Braden, used Fletcher's cultivated, although never pompous, way of speaking to open and close the programmes which were highly irreverent.

Although he was sent up wickedly, he never lost his dignity, proving so popular with listeners that he went on to become a broadcaster in his own right as opposed to a news reader.

The son of a chartered accountant, he inherited a substantial sum from his grandfather, who owned coal mines in the North of England, but used up most of his inheritance betting on horses, playing poker, and gambling on the Stock Exchange. Twice he had to sell his house to pay off his gambling debts.

Educated at Shrewsbury, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read English, he was sent down for spending too much time with the bookies rather than the books.

He emigrated to South Africa, became a radio crooner, and on his return to Britain in the late 1930s became unsuccessfully involved in making programmes for the early commercial stations.

During the war he served in an anti-aircraft regiment, and after his demob found his natural home with the BBC. He worked first as an announcer and then read the news on the Home Service. In 1950 Braden invited him to join his innovative new radio series as its announcer, and that led to other programmes like The Navy Lark and Quote. ......Unquote, on which he appeared from 1976-94.

He left the BBC's news reading team in the late 1960s to move over to television, appearing first on Braden's ITV show, On the Braden Beat, and later in the comedian's consumer programme for the BBC, Braden's Week. That programme ended in 1971 after Braden was sacked by the BBC for making a commercial.

Esther Rantzen, who succeeded Braden as the BBC's voice of the consumer is said to have wanted him for her show, That's Life, but the comedian Cyril Fletcher was approached by mistake and the other Fletcher did not find the niche in television the show would have provided. He carried on happily in radio, however, where he had the rare gift of being able to read anything and make it sound interesting.

He was married twice, first in 1938 to the late Terri Hann, by whom he had a son and daughter, and then in 1959, the year after their divorce, to Rita Dando, a studio manager with the BBC Overseas Service, by whom he also had a son and daughter. He died in hospital, after suffering a heart attack on his way to a betting shop.