Former Guardian journalist and television presenter who became one of the BBC's first environment correspondents
Some Guardian journalists stay for life; others move on. Ian Breach, who has died aged 72, was in the second category at a time when many stayed. He joined the Manchester features department as a young subeditor in May 1964. By 1972 he had already been the paper's jazz critic, become its first technology correspondent and, indeed, its first "anti-motoring" motoring correspondent. Environmental concern increasingly clashed with road-testing new cars.
The story goes that Ian went in to see the editor, the austere Alastair Hetherington, suggesting that what the Guardian needed was a transport correspondent. "Really?" replied Hetherington, "I love driving my Jaguar." Ian left; a few months later the paper appointed a transport correspondent.
Ian's path to the Guardian had hardly been conventional. As a 16-year-old Manchester working-class lad with a few GCEs, he took a marine engineering apprenticeship via Bolton technical college and Royal Dutch Shell. On leave in summer 1959, he met his future wife, Jacky, and effectively jumped ship to join her in London. Ian found work in PR and technical journalism. His Guardian potential was spotted by Anthony Tucker, soon to be made science correspondent.
First-hand knowledge of technology allowed Ian to talk detail with experts such as Walt Patterson at Friends of the Earth, and then describe complex issues in an understandable way. Passionate about arts as well as the environment, witty, contrary yet credible, he had the nerve, for instance, to expose industry "gifts" to motoring correspondents while still with the Guardian.
By the mid-1970s Ian, Jacky and their daughter, Emmie, had moved north to Milburn, a Cumbrian village nestling into Cross Fell. His first, typically provocative, act at Milburn was to make a film about village life. Restless ambitions then took him to Tokyo for six months as a senior speechwriter at the United Nations University.
Back home, Ian's speciality, energy policy, equipped him perfectly to cover the 1977 Windscale inquiry hearings into commercial waste reprocessing proposed by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) at Sellafield. Both the Financial Times and the New Scientist moved quickly to employ him.
Following the inquiry he declined a staff job with the FT, but wrote a meaty Penguin Special, Windscale Fallout: A Primer for the Age of Nuclear Controversy. The paperback is a balanced account of the inquiry and of the Callaghan government's decision in 1978 to approve the thermal oxide reprocessing plant (Thorp). However, its conclusion is uncompromising. "The politics of nuclear power and reprocessing will increasingly be those of disillusion, anger, frustration and mistrust. We shall all be the losers."
Meanwhile, Ian became a freelance Cumbria reporter for BBC Newcastle. He saw himself as a natural. But his first attempt at speaking to camera provoked an angry response from his veteran colleague: "It's too long, too wordy, and you aren't using your eyes. I don't care if you've worked for the Bible, sunshine. They won't use it."
He learned quickly, to the point where he was soon making films for Look North and the magazine programme Coast to Coast. His BBC editor there, John Mapplebeck, recalls how he had a "marked effect on the way TV covered places and topics". Then followed a productive stint with BBC Scotland. Tempted back to the north-east of England by Tyne Tees Television doubling his BBC salary, Ian came to realise that his appointment as a current affairs presenter doing "state of the region" programmes had been a ploy by the ITV company to help secure its franchise renewal. He was left kicking his heels after the franchise was confirmed.
So, in 1986, he left to join BBC South West in Plymouth, where he made poignant films, all networked, for a series called Natural Concern exploring disasters such as the Camelford water poisoning incident, issues including stag hunting on Exmoor, and events such as the economic death of a farm. They led to a successful period in Birmingham as chief reporter on Countryfile.
In 1989 Ian became one of the BBC's first environment correspondents, London-based, with responsibilities across radio and TV. After years in the regions he rose to the national and international brief. But his biggest story was again near home. On 15 November 1993, Panorama broadcast A Very British Folly, his film exploring the tortuous political history of Thorp. Perhaps it was the title, because the presentation was even-handed enough: BNFL took the BBC to the Press Complaints Commission and lost. However, his BBC star waning, he compounded matters by writing to the director general, John Birt, demanding more air time for environment. His contract was not renewed.
If the mid-1990s proved difficult for him professionally, Jacky flourished, running Chris Mullin's Sunderland South constituency office. Jacky died suddenly in 1999. She had requested a humanist funeral, which Ian helped plan. Shortly afterwards, he was asked if he was interested in training to be a humanist celebrant. Indeed he was. Some 13 years and more than 1,000 ceremonies later, he took a final humanist funeral in December 2012 for a young Carlisle mother who had died of cancer. He was himself dying of lung cancer.
Ian approached ceremonies with a reporter's diligence and a TV presenter's flair. He had an exceptional ability to recreate and calibrate the lives he celebrated.
Ian is survived by Wendy, his second wife, Emmie, four stepchildren, five grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
• Ian Breach, journalist, born 30 September 1940; died 22 January 2013