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This is taken from The Guardian:
Jonathan James-Moore
Gifted radio producer whose skills enabled original comedy and drama to thrive by Pete Atkin Wednesday November 30, 2005
Jonathan James-Moore, who has died of cancer aged 59, was an extraordinary physical presence. His untameable ginger hair and beard, and his body that seemed constructed specifically to cause any tailor to weep in despair, should have won him an award as Physically Least Likely Senior Manager in the BBC. The path that took him to become head of BBC Radio Entertainment (from 1991 to 1997) was equally free-form.
He was born in Stourport, Worcestershire, and went to Bromsgrove school. He read engineering at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but only after a delay of a year, having broken his back in one road accident and suffered the loss of his father in another. From that point on, engineering played only a small part in his life; a much larger part was taken up by undergraduate theatre, most notably in the Footlights of 1967 and 1968, when he was also the club's president.
His appearance (even without the beard) as an archetype of the traditional Englishman, together with his performing skill, gave focus and identity to many shows that might otherwise have seemed unexceptionally undergraduate. He bemoaned his inability to write sketches, but he always performed scripts far better than their writers could. His effortless authority made him a great team captain for the Footlights, and he was an instinctive entrepreneur.
While still a student he organised, with his friends Stephen Wright and, from Oxford, Bruce Kerr, the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company, in which students from both universities toured campuses in the US in professionally directed productions. Richard Cottrell directed the first in 1969, a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which featured, among others, Diana Quick, Mark Wing-Davey, Russell Davies, Julie Covington, Michael Wood, Hermione Lee and Robert Buckman, as well as Jonathan himself as Quince. Later productions of Twelfth Night, Hamlet and Julius Caesar were directed by Jonathan Miller.
In 1971 he became general manager of the Rosehill Theatre in Whitehaven, Cumbria, and, the following year, returned to London as manager of the Mermaid Theatre. From 1975, he was a driving force in the establishment of the theatre at St George's in Kentish Town, north London, which prefigured a lot of what happened much later at Shakespeare's Globe in Southwark.
Jonathan joined the BBC in 1978 as a producer in what was then Light Entertainment, Radio, filling the post vacated by Douglas Adams. He became script editor in 1987, chief producer in 1989, and, finally, head of the department.
He produced many of the staples of the department's output - panel games and scripted comedies - and quickly built a reputation as someone people wanted to work for. His gift as a producer, and later as a producer of producers, was to make the "creatives" feel that he was on their side. If Jonathan produced you, you knew he would fight for you - he would argue with the management and usually win; if he didn't, he would make any concession feel like a victory. His purpose was always to create the circumstances in which people felt confident to do the best they could, across a huge range: from Sue Limb's sublime literary satire The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere for Radio 4, to Laurie Rowley's Huddwinks with Roy Hudd for Radio 2, which won the Sony Gold Award in 1987.
Meanwhile, without even appearing to be a rebel, Jonathan used his entrepreneurial skills to subvert the rules by persuading his bosses to commission programmes which were simply good ideas, even if they didn't fit the brief of what Light Entertainment was generally supposed to be: there were, for example, several series for Radio 3 (not natural LE territory) of Robert Cushman's Book, Music and Lyrics; or Russell Davies's Are You Still Awake?, a series of seven-minute, pre-closedown dramas, also for Radio 3.
In the mid-1980s, he initiated Pirate Radio Four, a wavelength-split project specifically aimed at a young audience, which led directly to the expanded coverage for children on the original version of Radio Five Live, and then to what is happening now on BBC7. Jonathan also laid the groundwork for its other main element, the exploitation of the BBC radio archive. As head of Radio Entertainment, he oversaw the success of such series as Knowing Me Knowing You, Goodness Gracious Me, The League of Gentlemen, The Million Pound Radio Show, and No Commitments.
In 1994, Jonathan and his wife bought what he called a cowshed in Umbria, and when he left the BBC in 1999 they bought the cottage next door, intending to spend more time there in between the work he had no intention of giving up: producing radio programmes, of course; a close involvement with the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts; developing Voice Quality, a new actors' registry aimed at radio; flying the radio flag with the Directors' Guild of Great Britain; enjoying his membership of the Garrick Club; and writing about Italy.
Occasionally a colleague, and a friend since the mid-1960s, I can confirm that he was riotously unfashionable, extremely good company and generous in his many enthusiasms; he took immense pride in Jenny, his wife of 30 years, in his daughter Kate, and in everyone whose work he ever supported and enabled. And that's a long list.
· Jonathan Guy James-Moore, radio producer and executive, born March 22 1946; died November 20 2005
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