John Dunn, who has died from cancer aged 70, was a measured presenter of popular music, an intelligent interviewer on current affairs and an engaging radio personality with the BBC for more than 30 years, carrying off many awards and honours without ever falling victim to facile meedja conceit.
It was characteristic that when, in 1998, the John Dunn Show was awarded a gold Sony radio award for best drivetime music programme, competing with others broadcast at the time of day when motorists were driving home from work and fighting to subdue road rage, he defended it by saying that 98% of drivers were in fact nice people, a fact it was easy to forget while sitting in a traffic jam in the rain after a long, bad day at the office. His forte was mixing popular music with intelligent topics and presenting decency as some-thing that need not be boring.
His long-time agent Jo Gurnett was among those who thought he very much deserved his flamboyant informal title of the Gentle Giant of Radio - "he had a wonderful voice and was a true, true gentleman, a very nice, intelligent person who made a brilliant broadcaster".
Dunn's background was eminently respectable. Born in Glasgow, he was educated at Christ Church Cathedral Choir school, Oxford, and the King's school, Canterbury, and did his national service in the RAF from 1953 to 1955, during which time he became attracted to the process of broadcasting.
The following year, he joined the BBC external services as a studio manager, and two years later became a newsreader for the general overseas service, switching after a year to the BBC domestic services and beginning a career which would take him through all the radio networks before joining the Light Programme.
When popular music and some other programmes were switched to the new Radio 2, he switched with them, presenting the show that did more than any other to make him a household name from 1972, when he was still a member of the BBC staff, until 1998, when he had been a freelance for 22 years.
His shows led him to make broadcasts from many parts of the world, including Beijing, Boston, Manila, Seoul and Singapore, and in 1996 he broadcast his show live from Antarctica, a first for Radio 2 at least. He had been equally adventurous in the variety of radio series in which he broadcast over the years, achieving a score that few in the business could beat.
They included Just For You, Housewives' Choice, Music Through Midnight, Roundabout, Jazz Night, Saturday Sport, Sunday Sport, 4th Dimension, Breakfast Social, It Makes Me Laugh, Late Night Special, The National and European Brass Band Championships and various light music festivals.
His many awards included the TV and radio industries club personality of the year award in 1971, 1984 and 1986. In 1983 he was the Variety Club of Great Britain's radio personality of the year. He won the Daily Mail silver microphone award in 1988. The Radio Academy made him a member of its hall of fame in 2003, and he was made a freeman of the city of London in 1985.
In 1998, disaster struck. He was diagnosed as having cancer. Though he had several remissions, he stepped down from the John Dunn Show and presented radio programmes such as Friday Night Is Music Night, The Waltz Kings, The Glory Days and a Gilbert and Sullivan series. The then controller of Radio 2 described him at the time his illness was made public as the broadcaster's broadcaster. His occasional television appearances included taking the celebrity chair on Channel 4's Countdown programme.
His hobbies were permeated with his adventurousness and common sense. In 2000, he stated that his hobbies were music, wine and sitting in the sun, whereas four years later, when he was 70, he asserted that sailing and skiing had taken their place. In an unobtrusive way, he was a formidable character inhabiting the world of popular music, who never invited ridicule from intelligent listeners.
John Dunn married Margaret Jennison in 1958; they had two daughters.
· John Churchill Dunn, radio presenter, born March 4 1934, died November 27 2004
