Ken Sykora Broadcaster, musician and writer

Ken Sykora was born in London to the stepdaughter of a Swiss-German count. His mother had eloped with a Czech cavalry officer to escape disapproving parents. This fact came to light only after Sykora's guest appearance on Roy Plomley's Desert Island Discs. He had been unable to answer the question why his parents had come to London. Then an anonymous listener wrote to the programme with the explanation.

He later discovered the letter came from Phyllis, one of his two older sisters. Although there had been a full family reconciliation decades earlier, she had never previously mentioned the story to Sykora to "spare their mother" any embarrassment.

A gifted, cosmopolitan figure in his own right, Sykora's multiple talents led him to an arts degree in geography at Cambridge University, where he was also organiser of the Cubs (Cambridge University Band Society). He followed this with a science degree at London School of Economics, where he was elected president of the union as well as captain of the London University football team.

During the war, he served as an intelligence officer with the Chindits in the Far East. On his return, he recovered from malaria, and a failed early marriage, to teach in the east end of London, and then as a lecturer at the LSE and the College for Distributive Trades.

He met his second wife, Helen, on a blind date. They had an inauspicious start. He thought she was a rather spoiled young diva and she thought he was a boring academic bachelor with a glass eye - early contact lenses did no fashion favours. She stayed on out of politeness but, when he invited her along to listen to him play at a local club, she found herself left abandoned in a corner with a drink.

Feeling this was not the way to treat the lead singer at Murray's Cabaret Club, she was on the point of leaving when Sykora started to play the guitar. Entranced, she stayed on. They subsequently married and their wedding photograph featured on the front page of Melody Maker.

Music remained a first, allconsuming passion for Sykora. He led his own band in the 1950s, performing with Ted Heath at the London Palladium and Geraldo at the old Stoll Theatre. He was voted Britain's top guitarist five years running in Melody Maker's Readers' Polls.

Music led him into broadcasting and involvement in the creation of a veritable treasure trove of popular radio programming. First, he presented and played on Jazz Club and At the Jazz Band Ball. He devised, presented and performed on the Guitar Club and Stringalong series. Other programmes with the Sykora stamp included Those Record Years, Album Time, LP Parade, Big Band Sound and Radio Three's Jazz Digest. He also wrote and presented Radio One's first Plain Musician's Guide to the History of Pop.

One of his favourite programmes, which he also devised and presented for BBC Radio 2, was the autobiographical series, Be My Guest. On it, he talked to an "A"-list group of celebrity guests, including Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Segovia, Isaac Stern, Count Basie, Gloria Swanson, Bud Flanagan, Harry Secombe, Ambrose, Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream, about their lives, experiences and backgrounds.

Sykora proved a natural performer on television, with appearances on BBC, ATV, Anglia and Southern, working variously as a solo guitarist, presenter and interviewer. He also wrote for magazines, not only the music press but also educational, travel, and food and wine journals. He composed music for films and for his own band.

But the Sykora name had now become synonymous with quality radio programming, both music and speech-based. He helped to devise and was the original presenter on various daily and weekly series, including Roundabout (the prototype daily music and chat show on the old Light Programme). He contributed to Today, Housewives' Choice, Radio Newsreel, Holiday Hour (with Cliff Michelmore), Home This Afternoon, and schools and sports programmes. The latter included the first radio series on sailing. He took part in the first experimental stereo broadcasts and the first use of radio cars on location.

Sykora's radio career entered its third decade in the 1970s. He was still working as a regular host on those perennial favourites, You and Yours and Start the Week, when he and his family decided to fulfil an ambition to move to Scotland to run the Colintraive Hotel on the Kyles of Bute. It was a return home for Helen but a radical change of direction for both of them.

It duly proved an extremely demanding life, particularly as the hotel had one of the few Sunday licences in that rural area at the time. Between two and six on the Sabbath afternoon was the only free time available for any private family life and even this was frequently interrupted by a knock on the door and a request for afternoon tea from a group of tourists. It was no surprise when the hotel was sold five years later.

But any intention Sykora might have had of retiring from broadcasting was soon forgotten. He remained in demand, presenting music and magazine programmes for the BBC's (pre-Radio Scotland) Scottish service, including two editions of 12 Noon from Edinburgh. He gained a Sony nomination, the radio industry's equivalent of the Oscars, for best magazine programme for an edition, not surprisingly, on Place Names in Scottish Music.

Sykora also produced regular weekly music shows for Radio Clyde from its inception in 1974, notably Serendipity with Sykora. He later served as head of features at the station for four years and was responsible for "non-news" speech - organising consumer-service and community-involvement programmes such as Clyde Action, School Scene, Youth Work Out, Over Fifties Club and Radio Active.

Ken Sykora was not a part of the team that launched the new BBC Radio Scotland in 1978 but the early editorial mistakes of the station were soon corrected, helping to establish the foundations of today's successful national service. Sykora returned to play his part in that process, winning a Glenfiddich Award for best radio programme for Eater's Digest, a series that celebrated local food producers long before today's cult of the celebrity chef.

As judge and food expert, Derek Cooper, remarked: "On hearing Sykora's very first words, you just knew you were listening to a quality programme." He repeated that success with an Australian "Pater" award and the programme was listed as one of the top shows on the original BBC Radio 5.

It was also a very good series from which to wind down an active career. His radio life had been made up of more than 3000 such programmes, each one brought to life by a script circling the page in finely drawn, seemingly obscure lines. But what was delivered was a cornucopia of fact and insight on music, people, places and events, all presented in the warm, inclusive style Sykora had made his own.

In his final years, Sykora liked nothing better than watching the ever-changing waters of Loch Long lap on the foreshore opposite his house at Blairmore, and soaking up the music of Django Reinhardt and other guitar greats. His 80th birthday brought together a host of top performers, from Diz Disley to Martin Taylor, who came to pay their own tribute to this remarkable musician, broadcaster and quintessentially modest man.

Ken Sykora's wife, Helen, died in 1997. He is survived by his daughter, Alison, and sons, Duncan (also a musician) and Dougal.

Ken Sykora, musician and broadcaster; born April 13, 1923, died March 7, 2006.