Michael Winner

Michael Winner, who has died aged 77, was one of Britain’s few commercially viable film directors; he also followed a late-flowering vocation as a belligerent restaurant critic, becoming one of the country’s most outrageous and opinionated food writers.

In the course of a film career lasting 40 years, he made more than 30 pictures, among which were sharp social comedies such as The System (1963) and The Jokers (1966). But he derived his wealth and lasting reputation from later Hollywood hokum – notably the frenzied and graphically violent Death Wish series.

Preceded by his faux film noir capers such as The Mechanic (1972) and The Stone Killer (1973) — “all long on gore”, as one observer put it, “and short on sense” — Winner’s controversial blockbuster Death Wish (1974), starred Charles Bronson as a middle-class architect on a gory mission of vengeance after street muggers murder his wife and rape his daughter.

Many critics complained that Winner’s film exploited American paranoia over rising urban violence. “Michael Winner stacks the deck to make vigilante justice the only recourse against widespread crime,” declared one. The public, on the other hand, could scarcely get enough of the action; cinema audiences burst into applause each time a mugger was shot on screen, and even the celebrated American reviewer Judith Crist, admiring its theme of “Aristotelian purgation”, confessed to numbering the film among her guilty pleasures.

Most American film writers took Winner seriously as a director, admiring his swift efficiency and unerring knack of coming in on, or under, budget. But in Britain he was widely regarded as a flaky, loud-mouthed show-off.

Certainly Winner was always larger-than-life. He drove a Rolls-Royce, paid no attention to his appearance (he was notorious for his jumble sale jackets and single pair of battered shoes) and was rarely seen without an enormous Montecristo cigar.

Portrayed as “offensive, loud and bumptious”, Winner provoked comparison with Genghis Khan. Even close friends found him “cherubic, cheerful and dreadful”. Flamboyant, often boorish, he was, in many ways, his own worst enemy.

The veteran critic Barry Norman (who, in an earlier incarnation as a gossip columnist on the Daily Mail, had been ordered to fire Winner, then one of his underlings) considered him entertaining enough, “but he can also be rude and a bully, as if it amuses him to confront the world in the guise of a self-made shit ... Perhaps what gripes him is that he wanted to be a great director and never became one.”

Surprisingly for a man who described his most successful work as a “puddle of blood”, Winner was house-proud to the point of obsession. He employed a staff of nine who were required to sweep every carpet, dust every picture and polish every surface daily, and he admitted to spending occasional evenings dusting the tops of the doors.

A staunch supporter of Margaret Thatcher, whom he described as “one of my favourite ladies”, Winner rarely missed an opportunity to endorse her policies. In later life he was in demand for his views on topics ranging from film censorship (to which he was vigorously opposed), to the virtues of law and order (equally vigorously in favour).

In the 1980s he became founding chairman of the Police Memorials Trust, a charity dedicated to raising plinths in memory of policemen and women killed in the line of duty. In 2005 he presided as the Queen unveiled the National Police Memorial in The Mall, designed by Norman Foster.

Winner admitted that he had come late to good works and maintained that he had set up the charity only because he was advised against doing so. Not all its initiatives found favour with the service. For these, and for his countless politically-incorrect misdemeanours, in 2012 he was named the 38th most annoying person in Britain.

An only child, Michael Robert Winner was born in London on October 30 1935. His grandfather, a Russian immigrant, ran a chain of menswear shops, but his father went into property, prospered, and amassed a large collection of paintings, furniture and jade.

Michael’s eccentric Jewish mother suffered a lifelong addiction to gambling, and Winner recalled that at his bar mitzvah she threw a poker party; he spent the evening answering the door and taking coats to the cloakroom. She was a regular at the Monte Carlo Casino, where she lost more than £3 million. “She used to pawn my father’s oils,” Winner recalled, “and she stole and sold the deeds to my penthouse to pay her debts, but what can you do? You can’t sue your aged mother.” Indeed, he readily admitted that his mother was the most overpowering woman in his life and even suggested that she had “no doubt unintentionally prevented any kind of marriage”.

Michael was educated at St Christopher Quaker school in Letchworth. A lonely child, and something of a misfit, he sought consolation in the cinema, and spent his weekends and holidays writing about film stars for various papers, including the Sunday Express and the Evening Standard.

At 13 he decided on a career in the film industry and persuaded a local paper — The Kensington Post — to run his weekly film column, which was later syndicated to 32 other papers. At 16 Winner was asked to leave his school because they claimed he was “out of sympathy” with their aims. Judged medically unfit for National Service, he spent a year cramming for his exams before going up to Downing College, Cambridge, in 1953.

At Cambridge he edited the college paper and commissioned work from writers including Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. He left in 1956 with what he described as “a lousy degree” in Law and Economics and immediately began applying for places on various television training courses. Rejected by most of the major companies, he talked his way into a job as an autocue operator before being appointed first assistant director on the ITV series about a one-armed detective, Mark Saber.

In the meantime he began writing screenplays, mainly for thrillers, and made some cinema “shorts” which he learned to edit himself. In 1957 he directed his first travelogue — This is Belgium — shot largely on location in East Grinstead.

Winner had his first full-length screen success the following year when he made Some Like it Cool, a vehicle for the pop star Billy Fury set in a nudist colony during the “Twist” dance craze. He subsequently admitted that the film was “ludicrous rubbish”, but pointed out that it recouped its £9,000 budget within two weeks of release. Winner went on to direct Shoot to Kill in 1960.

In 1962 he wrote and directed The Cool Mikado, which starred Frankie Howerd. Howerd did not enjoy working with Winner and later described the film as “the worst I ever worked on”.

Throughout the 1960s Winner specialised in socially-observant comedies such as The Jokers (1966) and I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname (1967), both starring Oliver Reed. In contrast to the nervous Howerd, Reed responded well to what he described as “a director who shouted louder than I did” and Winner used him again in his 1968 film Hannibal Brooks.

Having made an impression in America, where The Jokers did well, in 1970 Winner made Lawman, a low-budget Western starring Burt Lancaster. After an unsuccessful attempt at retelling The Turn of the Screw in The Nightcomers (1971), starring Marlon Brando, he tried another Western, Chato’s Land. The film starred Charles Bronson as an Indian hunted by a posse after the murder of a sheriff. Critics complained that the film was “bloodthirsty” and “overlong”; but it proved popular with the public.

After making a spy thriller, Scorpio, in 1972 Winner chose the macho Bronson to star in The Stone Killer (1973), as a policeman trying to solve a brutal series of murders. Then, in 1974, came Death Wish.

Winner followed this with what he described as “a bitingly satirical piece” — Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood. The film flopped despite the presence of Phil Silvers and cameo appearances by a variety of stars. So Winner returned to making explicitly violent films with The Sentinel in 1976. His penchant for stage blood and his use of dwarves and the physically handicapped to represent “demons” was not popular with critics. One reviewer described the film as “ideal for people who like to slow down and look at traffic accidents”.

Winner dismissed claims that he was encouraging anti-social behaviour by featuring so much violence in his films. “The public likes action,” he insisted, “it takes their minds off the real world for an hour and that’s what entertainment is all about.”

Some saw his reworking of classic films such as The Big Sleep (1977) and The Wicked Lady (1982) as attempts to win critical support. Neither film proved successful at the box office and, again, he returned to his proven formula, this time with Death Wish II (1981).

The film featured Bronson still wreaking vengeance on a collection of muggers and rapists. It fell foul of both the censor and feminist critics due to a particularly brutal gang rape scene. “I don’t think people are affected by what they see,” Winner insisted. “It’s fantasy, people don’t watch a murder and then go out and commit one.”

And yet, despite claiming that he did not support any form of vigilantism, Winner made donations to the vigilante group known as the Guardian Angels. He was regularly quoted as dismissing the censorship code as “absolute piffle” and created a furore when he accused the Prince of Wales of being “ignorant of the facts” about censorship.

He claimed that incidents of crime and sexual offences had increased since the government had tried to cut violence from the screen, and cited Japan as proof of his theory. “They have the most sexually violent and explicit literature in the world,” he declared, “but their crime rate is the lowest.”

Winner went on to make Death Wish III (1985) which, while critically mauled, was financially even more successful than the previous two films. “I’d have Charles Bronson starring in Death Wish XXVI,” he insisted,

“if I thought it would make a profit.”

Throughout the 1980s Winner veered between commercial action films and mainstream comedies such as Bullseye (1989), starring Michael Caine and Roger Moore. In 1989 he made another attempt at winning critical support with his adaptation of the Alan Ayckbourn play A Chorus of Disapproval. The film featured stars such as Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons and Prunella Scales, but flopped.

In 1991 Winner made a departure from film-making to host the television programme True Crimes (LWT), featuring re-enactments of various famous criminal cases. The series mirrored the BBC programme Indelible Evidence, even to the point of having Winner (like his BBC counterpart Ludovic Kennedy) introduce each case from the depths of a leather armchair.

Later that year Winner embarked on another film, an adaptation of the novel Dirty Weekend. Although denying that the film was “a female version of Death Wish”, he did admit that the plot dealt with a female vigilante who hunts down and kills the men who raped her.

He produced and directed his last full-length film project, Parting Shots, featuring Chris Rea, Ben Kingsley, Felicity Kendal, Oliver Reed and Joanna Lumley, in 1998. He also appeared in, wrote and directed numerous television commercials, notably his “Calm down, dear” series for an insurance company.

When not making films Winner spent most of his time at his 46-roomed Victorian mansion in Holland Park, formerly the home of the painter Sir Luke Fildes, where he housed his collection of fine furniture and paintings. His father had leased the house after the war and turned it into flats; Winner bought out the other tenants one by one and restored it. In 2011 he announced that he was putting the house on the market.

“I don’t go out much,” he recalled, “partly because I get bored sitting next to the same person for three hours and partly because I started giving my hostesses marks out of 10 for their cooking.” He spent his free time gardening (“my garden is floodlit so I quite often garden after midnight”) or with a string of girlfriends, notably the actress Jenny Seagrove. After a relationship lasting several years, the couple broke up in 1993. “Girlfriends have to be cheerful,” he insisted, “light and bright is essential, otherwise, what’s the point?”

Winner claimed that his life had not altered in the past 40 years. “I do essentially the same things I did as an 18-year-old,” he said. “I go on dates, I make films, I write, nothing has really changed.”

He was a regular panellist on Radio 4’s Any Questions, and later appeared on television programmes including the BBC’s Question Time and Have I Got News For You. He was an honorary member of Bafta and of the Directors’ Guild of Great Britain.

Winner had a love-hate relationship with journalists, and — like Tony Benn — insisted on recording interviews lest he was misquoted. On the other hand he regarded newspapers as a convenient platform for his manifold opinions and for nearly 10 years wrote a page on politics and life in the News of The World; he was also a regular contributor to the Daily Mail.

Most notably, from 1994 he wrote what eventually became Winner’s Dinners, a weekly column about food and restaurants in The Sunday Times. It was during these culinary excursions, invariably illustrated by a photograph of Winner mugging for the camera with the proprietor of the (usually eye-wateringly expensive) establishment under review, that he gave fullest vent to his reputation as a world-class curmudgeon.

Winner’s books included a collection of his food columns ; and an autobiography, Winner Takes All (2004), with further recollections in Unbelievable! (2010) and Tales I Never Told (2011). His last publication, Michael Winner’s Hymie Joke Book, appeared in 2012.

His love of rich food and cigars eventually caught up with him. In August 1993, after suffering acute chest pains, he was told that he would have to undergo a triple heart bypass operation. Then, in January 2007, he contracted the rare disease vibrio vulnificus after eating an oyster in Barbados.

He counted himself lucky to have survived at all, but his health continued to decline, and last summer he was given only two years to live. Having filed his final restaurant column last December, he auctioned his collection of more than 100 original children’s book illustrations, including the earliest depictions of Winnie-the-Pooh by EH Shepard.

Meanwhile he turned down the offer of an OBE for his work on behalf of the police, remarking: “An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King’s Cross Station.” On Twitter, Winner subsequently claimed that he had declined a knighthood.

He also revealed that he had been investigating the possibility of travelling to the assisted suicide clinic Dignitas in Switzerland. “I’ve got no fear about death,” he said recently. “I’m very happy to snuff it; you have to live with the cards you’ve been dealt with.” But he admitted that not having children was a “the one mistake that wipes out everything I have ever done”.

In 2011 he married Geraldine Lynton-Edwards, whom he had met in 1957 when he was 21.

Michael Winner, born October 30 1935, died January 21 2013

Helmut Haller

Helmut Haller, who has died aged 73, briefly thrilled all of West Germany when he scored the opening goal against England in the 1966 World Cup Final.

Helmut Haller (far right) celebrates as he scores the opening goal of the 1966 World Cup Final 

With five goals in the team’s matches thus far, Haller had already established himself as one of the players of the tournament. Only Eusebio had netted more times, but the thickset Haller had little of the Portuguese player’s panther-like grace.

Indeed, playing at inside-right, he was more a creator of chances for others than a finisher. None the less, when Ray Wilson’s poor header fell to him on the edge of the area in the 13th minute of the final, he controlled the ball in an instant and fired it across Gordon Banks.

His blond hair gleaming in the sunshine, Haller wheeled away in triumph, only for Geoff Hurst to equalise a few minutes later. As England eventually ran out 4-2 winners, Haller saw little more of the ball until the final whistle, when he picked it up and shook hands with the Queen with it tucked under his arm.

In 1996 he was persuaded by a British newspaper to hand over the ball to Hurst as a memento of the hat-trick the Englishman had scored. It is now in the National Football Museum in Manchester.

Helmut Haller was born on July 21 1939 in Augsburg, Bavaria, where his father worked on the railways. At 18 he joined his hometown club. German football was then still organised into semi-professional regional leagues, and as wages were nominal Haller supplemented his income by working as a lorry driver.

He won his first cap for West Germany at 19, and in 1962 helped the team to the quarter-finals of the World Cup in Chile. His performances in midfield led to an approach from the Italian side Bologna, which offered Haller 40 times what he was earning at Augsburg.

When he finally decided to sign for Bologna, the German FA labelled him a mercenary. Like several other star players who took the same route over the Alps, Haller was effectively frozen out of the national side for the next four years.

It was therefore largely in Italy that he rose to international prominence. His dribbling skills and eye for a telling pass were much admired by the discerning spectators there, as was his fruitful partnership with the Danish striker Harald Nielsen. In 1964 Haller shepherded Bologna to their first and only post-war league title and was voted Footballer of the Year – no mean achievement given that many Italians still harboured bitter wartime memories of Germans.

After scoring 48 goals in 179 matches for Bologna, Haller joined Juventus in 1968. Playing in Turin alongside such talents as Roberto Bettega, Fabio Capello and Dino Zoff, he won back-to-back Serie A championships in 1972 and 1973. He finished on the losing side, however, against Leeds in the 1971 Fairs Cup Final, and again two years later in the European Cup Final against Johan Cruyff’s Ajax.

Having been hampered by injury in the run-up to 1970 World Cup, Haller played his last game for West Germany in their opening match against Morocco. He spent the rest of the tournament on the bench as the team finished third. He had won 33 caps and scored 13 times.

With the founding of the Bundesliga in 1963, German soccer had turned professional, and in 1973 Haller returned to Augsburg. Instead of taking a fixed salary he settled for five per cent of the gate money. He eventually hung up his boots aged 40.

Haller had a reputation for enjoying nightlife and publicity, and in later life he ran a fashion boutique.

He married three times, on the last occasion in 2003 to a 21-year old Cuban woman more than 40 years his junior. She survives him, as do two sons and a daughter.

Helmut Haller, born July 21 1939, died October 11 2012

Max Bygraves

Max Bygraves, who died aged 89, was a singer and comedian who became famous for his stage performances, notably in 19 Royal Variety Performances, and went on to lead the market in the kind of foot-tapping nostalgia which characterised his “Singalongamax” recordings.

Max Bygraves

Millions were charmed by his disarmingly homely delivery of catchphrases such as “I wanna tell you a story”, “I’ve arrived’, “dollar lolly”, and “Big ’Ead” — though to many observers, including most press critics, his repartee often seemed insipid and predictable, and the scale of his enduring appeal remained enigmatic.

The ease with which he combined Danny Kaye’s style of intimate yet polite comic delivery with frequent reference to his own deprived childhood in East London, made his stardom seem universally attainable; and the fact that some of his jokes were familiar or mediocre only enhanced this effect. He was, as one critic said, “The boy next door writ large”.

Bygraves was still a soprano when he appeared in Tony Gerrard’s “Go as you Please” talent contest at the New Cross Empire. His rendition of It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today, given while clutching a half-starved mongrel dog whose level of house-training proved unequal to the testing demands of live Variety, was irresistible to the Empire audience.

This success led to Sandy Powell impressions, and precocious performances of songs such as Melancholy Baby. He later observed that audiences “liked nothing more than a kid singing grown-up words” — a formula he was to invert, with great success, with songs like You’re a Pink Toothbrush, I’m a Blue Toothbrush, I’ll Take the Legs From Some Old Table, and Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea.

He was born Walter William Bygraves in Rotherhithe on October 16 1922, the son of a professional flyweight boxer who then worked on the Surrey Commercial Docks. “Wally” was one of six children brought up in a two-bedroom flat. He would acquire his stage name during the war as a result of his Max Miller impressions, performed in RAF reviews.

In his early teens he supplemented the family income by repairing footwear, and went into the business on his own account during the summer holidays — an early indication of an acute business sense not always found in showbusiness types. Lionel Bart, for instance, sold Bygraves his Oliver score for £350; Bygraves resold the rights for $250,000 .

Despite his early success at the New Cross Empire, when he left St Joseph’s School, Paradise Street, it was to become a messenger for WS Crawford’s advertising agency, running copy up and down Fleet Street. He spent the war as a fitter in the RAF, and in 1945 went to work as a carpenter in East Ham. A chance meeting with an RAF contact — outside the London Palladium — secured an appearance in the BBC variety show They’re Out.

The bandleader Jack Payne heard the programme, and this led to a spot in a new show, For the Fun of It, in which Bygraves starred with Donald Peers and a young Frankie Howerd. In 1950 Jack Parnell and Cissie Williams hired him as a replacement for Ted Ray at the Palladium, a role he filled so successfully that he was back in Argyll Street a few weeks later, appearing with Abbott and Costello at the theatre which was to become, for a number of years, his second home.

He gave his first Royal Variety Performance in November 1950, and was invited to join the radio ventriloquist Peter Brough in Educating Archie, the show which “launched”, among others, Tony Hancock; Bygraves’s then scriptwriter, Eric Sykes; and 14-year-old Julie Andrews, who was ousted from her singing spot when Bygraves arrived.

When he accepted an invitation to spend a month supporting Judy Garland at the Palladium, she was sufficiently impressed to ask him to appear with her at the Palace, New York, where together they sang A Couple of Swells. Notices were generally good and, in some sections of the British press, ecstatic. His performances also won praise from Marlene Dietrich.

Bygraves later said that he considered Judy Garland’s act to be “mediocre because of its simplicity”. He was able, nevertheless, to make the trip to Hollywood for The Judy Garland Show, which led to invitations — also accepted — to meet Clark Gable and James Mason.

During the 1950s there were numerous stage appearances in Britain, notably in Wonderful Time, and in We’re Having a Ball, which also starred the Kaye Sisters and Joan Regan. Bygraves took some time off from having a ball to write You Need Hands, a song which ran for several months in the Top 20.

The show Do Re Mi brought more success, in Manchester and London in 1961, though many considered him less suited to the role of the self-seeking and unprincipled New Yorker Hubie Cram than its American interpreter, Phil Silvers. In another revue from the early Sixties, Round About Piccadilly, he had a 20-minute spot with his son Anthony, though their partnership was never quite the success he had hoped.

With the arrival of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Bygraves became, seemingly overnight, part of the “Old Guard”. Only two years before the Royal Variety Performance during which he heard John Lennon urge the “expensive seats” to “rattle your jewellery”, he had been appearing in the same event with The Crazy Gang. His response — to concentrate on television — was typically astute. With writer Spike Mullins, he made Max in 1969, and his relaxed, cosy style adapted well to the small screen, although he still did not convince the serious critics.

At the suggestion of his mother, in 1972 Bygraves recorded an album of songs, including Daisy and If You Were the Only Girl in the World, with relatively sparse arrangements for two pianos and a chorus. Sing Along with Max was an instant success, and the first of a series of recordings which brought him most of his 31 gold discs. By the time the show Singalongamax was produced in London in 1974, the mood was one of wistful reminiscence.

As the youth culture of the Seventies became increasingly unsympathetic to most of Bygraves’s audience, and The Sex Pistols released an irreverent reading of his song You Need Hands, the appeal of such nostalgia only increased.

He continued to appear on television, drawing massive audiences, and in 1983 was appointed OBE. From 1983 to 1985 he hosted the television show Family Fortunes. By the late Eighties, however, there were fewer listeners prepared to “singalongamax”, and his records were banned from peak time broadcasts on the Bournemouth radio station which he partly owned.

He also appeared in several films, including Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1951), Spare the Rod (1961), Charlie Moon (1956) and A Cry From The Streets (1958). His novel, The Milkman’s On His Way, concerned a working boy who became the highest-paid pop star in the world. He saw no essential difference between literary and musical inspiration, as he explained on the book’s publication in 1977: “Dickens and all those people used to do it, almost the same thing as we do. Only, of course, without the songs.”

He published several volumes of memoirs, including I Wanna Tell You A Story (1976), After Thoughts (1988) and In His Own Words (1997).

In 2001 Bygraves recorded an album for the Royal British Legion, and four years later he emigrated to Australia.

His wife Gladys (known as “Blossom”), whom he married in 1942, died in 2011, and he is survived by their son and two daughters. He is said to have fathered three other children by three different women.

Max Bygraves, born October 16 1922, died August 31 2012

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, the cricket commentator and writer, who has died aged 67, held at various times the most coveted posts in his profession, having been the game’s chief correspondent at the BBC, The Daily Telegraph and The Times.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the commentary box with Henry Blofeld and Bill Frindall  

For good measure he was also editor of The Cricketer, and was asked to be editor of Wisden. Such was his reputation and his popularity within the game that in 2010 he became President of MCC, a rare honour for a journalist, and one that had remained an aspiration even for the Telegraph’s Jim Swanton.

As a radio commentator, Martin-Jenkins possessed neither the descriptive virtuosity of John Arlott, nor the high-spirited effervescence of Brian Johnston. Nobody excelled him, though, in what he regarded as the first duty: that of giving a precise, clear, well-informed and accurate account of every ball that was bowled and every stroke that was played.

Only when that essential had been achieved did he venture upon comment, humour and anecdote. It was an approach that must have involved deliberate restraint, for no one was better versed in cricketing lore.

Martin-Jenkins was also an excellent mimic, who in his Cambridge days had had some success in cabaret, not least in a parody of Rudyard Kipling’s If as enunciated by Edward Heath.

His writing displayed the same virtues of clarity and relevance as his commentaries. Sharply aware both of the rules of grammar and of the subtleties of phrasing, he would impatiently confront those who presumed to alter his copy.

Martin-Jenkins loved cricket in general, not just the ultimate challenge of a Test match. In his mind a prep school game could be every bit as exciting as a one-day international. On the same principle, as chief cricket correspondent he insisted that the county championship should be covered as conscientiously as an Ashes series.

He especially warmed to cricket in its more intimate settings, revelling in festivals such as Cheltenham and Scarborough, where he could share gossip and drollery with fellow journalists. No man, though, was ever further from being a dilettante. Compulsively industrious, Martin-Jenkins always seemed ready to intensify the pressure by taking on new work.

His professionalism, however, never eliminated a certain unpredictability in practical matters. In particular, he conducted a stormy relationship with his computer, more than once inflicting terrible crises on himself by hitting the Delete instead of the Send button.

Martin-Jenkins certainly loved his career; the strain it exacted, however, sometimes left him exhausted, irritable and prone to attacks of migraine. Fortunately, at a deeper level, serenity prevailed. His Anglican faith certainly involved some accommodation with doubt; nevertheless, he possessed the will and determination to believe what he hoped might be true before being certain that it was.

So his natural buoyancy and optimism were sustained. It must have helped, too, that he came from a family well-rehearsed in the challenges and disciplines of professional success.

Christopher Dennis Alexander Martin-Jenkins, the second of three brothers, was born at Peterborough, where his maternal grandmother lived, on January 20 1945. His father worked in shipping for Ellerman Lines, ending his career as chairman and managing director. His mother, a doctor, came from a distinguished medical family.

Christopher passed his first two years in Ayrshire, after which his parents moved to Prenton, a suburb of Birkenhead. Then, in 1951, his father, promoted to his firm’s London office, bought a large house at South Holmwood in Surrey.

From as far back as he could remember Christopher was captivated by cricket. At an early age he would amuse himself by commentating on matches, both real and fictitious. As a teenager he attempted his first book, Cricket, Lovely Cricket, for which he improvised a foreword by Brigitte Bardot: “Mes amis, je pense que cette [sic] livre est superbe; non, merveilleux. J’adore le Cricket et j’adore cette [sic] livre. Bonne chance.”

At St Bede’s prep school in Eastbourne, Martin-Jenkins gave every promise of becoming a formidable player, alike with bat and ball. Later, he captained the Marlborough XI, and scored 99 against Rugby at Lord’s.

Going on to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to read Modern History, he had the satisfaction of obtaining the same degree in the subject, a 2:1, as his Fitzwilliam contemporary David Starkey.

Martin-Jenkins did not, however, achieve the cricket Blue that had been predicted. Perhaps he cared too much; at any rate his natural talent, when put on trial, suddenly seemed afflicted by nerves and self-consciousness.

The disappointment was the more severe as his enthusiasm for the game never flagged. Indeed, he felt that he reached his batting peak shortly after leaving Cambridge, when he turned out for Surrey Club and Ground. Later, in 1971, he played in a match for the county’s second XI.

However demanding his career, Martin-Jenkins rarely refused a chance to turn out in club cricket, whether for local sides such as Cranleigh, Albury and Horsham, or for MCC, the Free Foresters, the Arabs, I Zingari and the Marlborough Blues.

Despite his failure to gain a cricket Blue at Cambridge, he had the satisfaction of leading Fitzwilliam to victory in cricket Cuppers, and of obtaining a half-Blue for Rugby Fives. His undergraduate enthusiasms, moreover, were by no means confined to sport. He was brave enough to audition for the Footlights under the scrutiny of Clive James, Germaine Greer and Eric Idle.

In his last year at Marlborough Martin-Jenkins had written to Brian Johnston to ask how he might become a cricket commentator. His ambition was reinforced by the kindness with which Johnston received him.

After leaving Cambridge in 1967, however, he became an assistant at The Cricketer, under the august editorship of Jim Swanton. His first feature article, “In Defence of Professionalism”, caused the great panjandrum to dissociate the magazine from the views expressed.

Fortunately, when Richie Benaud’s copy failed to turn up, Martin-Jenkins was able to gain kudos by improvising a piece under the great Australian’s name.

After three years at The Cricketer he passed on to the more intense atmosphere of the BBC Radio Sports room, then run by a formidable and frequently vitriolic Scotsman called Angus Mackay, who liked to declare that his door was always open to everyone.

Martin-Jenkins rashly took him at his word and ventured a criticism of one of the programmes, with the result that Mackay never again spoke directly to him. Nevertheless, the tyro was tough enough to survive and eventually flourish in this most stressful of departments.

In 1973 he took over from Brian Johnston as the BBC’s cricket correspondent, a promotion which intensified his lifelong campaign against the predominance of football coverage. Another of his duties, which brought his name to national notice, was to present the sports slot on the Today programme.

From the moment he joined the BBC, Martin-Jenkins had pressed Outside Broadcasting for a trial as cricket commentator, and in May 1970 he passed his first audition. His debut before the public came at Old Trafford in August 1972, during the first one-day international to be played in England, against Australia. For the rest of his life he would be a member of the BBC’s commentary team.

It was not until 2008 that Martin-Jenkins, the voice of sober responsibility, unintentionally produced one of those “corpsing” sexual innuendos which afford listeners such merriment: “Broad runs in, he bowls, and this time Vettori lets it go outside the off stump. It was a good length, inviting him to fish, but Vettori, so to speak, stayed on the bank and kept his rod up.”

From 1974 to 1981 Martin-Jenkins passed most of his winters covering England’s overseas cricket tours. On the whole he enjoyed the experience; however, the desire to be with his growing family caused him to change direction in 1981, when he accepted an invitation to become editor of The Cricketer.

This meant a much reduced salary, which encouraged him to accept extra work, necessary at once for the payment of school fees, and for the financing of the large house which he bought at Rudgwick, near Horsham, in 1983.

Although he officially left the BBC in 1981, the Corporation retained him for Test Match Special, and also gave him the chance to do some television commentary. Radio, however, remained his staple.

Martin-Jenkins had already published several books, most importantly The Complete Who’s Who of Test Cricketers in 1980, a monumental effort which has retained its place as an essential reference book.

Now he found time to produce The Wisden Book of County Cricket (1981); Bedside Cricket (1981); Twenty Years On: Cricket’s years of change (1984); Cricket: a way of life (1984); Grand Slam (1987); Cricket Characters (1987); Sketches of a Season (1987); and Ball by Ball (1990).

In addition he edited Cricketer Book of Cricket Eccentrics (1985); Seasons Past (1986), and Quick Singles (1986). Only a workaholic and an exceptionally fluent writer could have achieved as much in his spare time.

From 1984 to 1991, moreover, he resumed his position as cricket correspondent of the BBC. He was also much in demand as an after-dinner speaker, winning many plaudits, albeit disturbing the feminist lobby on one occasion with an untoward remark about Martina Navratilova.

In 1991 Martin-Jenkins changed tack once more, becoming the chief cricket correspondent of The Daily Telegraph . So effective were his columns that in 1999 he was poached by The Times. Nine years later he handed over the reins at that paper to Michael Atherton, though he continued to contribute articles.

Meanwhile, the cricket books continued to flow: Summers Will Never Be the Same (1994); an anthology, The Spirit of Cricket (1990); An Australian Summer (1999); Men for All Seasons (2001); and The Top 100 Cricketers of All Time (2009).

In 2009 and 2010 Martin-Jenkins’s health seemed to be weakening, a bad bout of pneumonia being followed by acute hepatitis. His career, however, was crowned by his appointment as President of MCC for 2010-11.

His time in office coincided with the controversy over “Vision for Lord’s”, a plan to build five towers of flats at the north of the Nursery ground, while installing the cricket school and museum under that field. Some £100 million of the profit, it was envisaged, would be devoted to improving the capacity and facilities at the main ground.

Many MCC members, Martin-Jenkins among them, had doubts about both the aesthetics and scale of the plan. When Robert Griffiths, QC, as head of the development committee a leading protagonist for the scheme, attempted to exert pressure on the chairman and treasurer of MCC, these two dignitaries issued a counter-threat.

Either the development committee should be wound up, they announced, or they would stand down from their offices. At a stormy meeting in February 2011, Martin-Jenkins helped to ensure that the former course was chosen.

Far more pleasurable were the social responsibilities of the presidency. In particular, he enjoyed visiting Australia (and doubling as a BBC commentator) when England retained the Ashes in 2011.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins was appointed MBE in 2009.

In 2012 he published an autobiography, CMJ: a cricketing life. Typically of its author, it was largely about other people. The book did make clear, however, that, outside cricket, the great loves of his life were Sussex, golf and, beyond all else, his family.

He married, in 1971, Judith Hayman, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. Their younger son, Robin, proved a successful county cricketer for Sussex.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, born January 20 1945, died January 1 2013