My friend Jeremy James, who has died aged 79, was a core member of the BBC’s long-running and much-admired documentary and current affairs series Man Alive. The series, which ran on television from 1965 to 1981, tackled a variety of controversial issues, often in a confrontational manner unusual for its time. Jeremy worked on it variously as reporter, presenter and producer, and later continued in those roles in other one-off television documentaries. His lifelong interest in chess and bridge then led to presenter roles in 1980s TV coverage of events such as the World Bridge Championships and the World Chess Championship, and programmes such as The Master Game and World Chess Report.
Jeremy was born in Portishead in Bristol to Francis, a journalist, and Muriel (nee Evans), who ran Portishead library. After Bristol grammar school he took on various journalistic jobs in the West Country, before and after national service, and eventually ended up at the BBC and Man Alive. He met Gillian Molteno in London and they married in 1969. After the marriage ended in divorce in 1979, Jeremy moved to France, where he became involved in property ventures and took up gardening with considerable fervour, particularly for vegetables. His final years were spent near Yssingeaux in the Haute-Loire region of south-central France in a property shared with his friend Marie Dominique Colombet and a quirky menagerie of animals including ostriches, budgerigars and a fine pig.
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