Broadcaster, critic and team-member on the long-running BBC radio quiz My Music
The broadcaster and music critic John Amis, who has died aged 91, became a national figure thanks to the long-running BBC radio quiz My Music. Having made his living in a variety of music-related jobs, he joined the programme largely by chance. He was a friend of David Franklin, a former operatic bass, who with the bass-baritone Ian Wallace and the comedy writers Frank Muir and Denis Norden made up the original My Music quartet, with Steve Race putting the questions. When Franklin had to leave the programme in 1973 because of ill-health, a replacement proved difficult to find. Ernest Stancliffe of the BBC external services finally suggested Amis as a suitable singer and anecdotist.
He brought a sound tenor voice to the concluding round of songs, but it took him time to settle into the badinage needed for the programme's mix of information and inventive fun. Muir told Amis that he was no good at repartee and should stick to stories. And this he did till the programme came to an end in 1994, with some series on BBC2 television along the way.
John, a cousin of the novelist Kingsley Amis, was born in Dulwich into a banking family with a love of amateur musicmaking. His father played piano duets with him, and took him to operas before he was 10.
After leaving Dulwich college, he tried banking, but only for six weeks. Packed off to study harmony and counterpoint, he also worked in the EMG specialist record shop in London. Though he enjoyed talking to the distinguished customers, he got behind with his accounts. When shellac, from which records were then made, grew short with the outbreak of war, his employment came to an end.
Making himself useful at the London Philharmonic Orchestra's office, he managed to get on to the payroll and organised the LP Arts Club. He persuaded Edith Sitwell to recite her poetry and the pianist Louis Kentner to play for two guineas. He also worked for Myra Hess at the National Gallery and Thomas Beecham. As a result of joining the choir at Morley College when Michael Tippett was conducting it, he persuaded the LPO to give the premiere of the composer's oratorio A Child of Our Time.
Amis excelled, long before the idea was commonplace, at networking, and the anecdotal material soon followed. He was present as Benjamin Britten completed his opera Peter Grimes. After a lunch they had both attended, Britten went over to a corner and started scribbling, returning to the table to announce: "That's it, I've finished." An Adrian Boult concert that Amis organised found itself short of percussion. "Mr Amis, play the triangle," ordered Sir Adrian. He did.
Amis's friendship with William Glock, who later became head of BBC music, led to him deputising as London music critic of the Scotsman – he was the only one to proclaim Tippett's opera A Midsummer Marriage (1955) a masterpiece. He was also administrator of the summer music courses directed by Glock at Bryanston school, Dorset, and later at Dartington Hall school, Devon, between 1948 and 1981, with a stellar lineup of tutors.
Amis had always toyed with the thought of becoming a professional singer. After an audition in the Austrian city of Graz, the opera house's director told him: "Do I understand that you have done music criticism? Then why don't you stick to it?" He wrote a column in the Tablet, obituaries for the Guardian and in recent years a blog.
For the BBC World Service he conducted unscripted interviews – then a novel departure – with distinguished musicians. His Music Now magazine programme on Radio 3 and, for a season, BBC2 television worked on the same principle. By the time Radio 3 marked his 90th birthday last year, he had an archive of 500 interviews to draw on. When travelling abroad with great artists, he could sometimes find himself better known than they were.
In 1948 he married the violinist Olive Zorian. They divorced in 1955.
• John Preston Amis, broadcaster and music critic, born 17 June 1922; died 1 August 2013