My friend and former colleague Martin Cox, who has died at the age of 74 while on holiday in Portugal, was a committed public service broadcaster who worked on Radio 4’s Today, PM and other programmes. He epitomised all that is best about those who work behind the scenes at the BBC. Gifted with a keen editorial brain, he was valued for his integrity and fairness.
The oldest of four children of Helen (nee Winfield) and Graham, a personnel manager, Martin was born in Chester and raised in Cambridge and Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. He was sent to boarding school at the age of eight by his father, an old-fashioned Tory, and then to Eton. He rejected his father’s politics, and after school worked his passage round the world on freight and passenger ships before going to study law at Cambridge, keeping in touch with the real world by working as a labourer during the holidays.
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