This is taken from The Times, September 26, 2007:

John Morrell

John Morrell, who has died aged 68, was a leading television producer and the longest-serving editor of Esther Rantzen's popular That's Life consumer show on BBC-1 in the 1970s and 1980s; he was also a successful producer of the annual Children In Need telethon and later became head of Bafta.

During a 30-year career as a television journalist Morrell covered moon shots in the 1960s, edited the BBC's election coverage on the night that Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979, and the following year was in charge of covering the American presidential election that resulted in victory for Ronald Reagan.

Known as a "people person" in an age when few programme editors had even heard of the concept, Morrell, a sage Yorkshireman, enjoyed a reputation at the BBC as a safe pair of hands. In taking over at the helm of That's Life — a high-profile weekend staple on BBC-1 — he successfully made the transition from down-to-earth current affairs to Topical Features, the programme's parent department, of which, in 1990, he was appointed head.

His two stints at That's Life — the first in the mid-1970s and again in the mid-1980s — put a strain on Morrell's puritanical instincts, particularly when he had to approve some of the show's smuttier ingredients in an era in which the BBC believed that such things should be held in check.

The word "Knockers", for example, which cropped up in a viewer's complaint about some clothes she had bought from a boutique of that name, had to be changed to "Knackers" (perhaps with limited remedial effect); while a reference to "my old man's doo-dah" by a woman in the street confronted by Esther Rantzen bearing a plate of sliced squid was rescued only by Rantzen's quoting the line from the song Camptown Races that goes "doo-dah doo-dah day".

Some in the BBC regarded the editor's job at That's Life as something of a minefield, since it entailed handling not only the show's formidable star — Esther Rantzen famously failed to suffer fools gladly — but also her powerful husband, Desmond Wilcox, who was then her department head; Morrell acted as a human firewall between them and found that he got on well with both.

While producing the Children In Need programme in the early 1980s, he introduced some fresh telegenic fund-raising stunts involving the armed forces, and persuaded Royal Mail to send an antique stagecoach around the country collecting money.

In the 1970s, as an assistant editor on Nationwide, with its eclectic mix of serious journalism and "skateboarding ducks", Morrell would apply his own version of the Clapham omnibus test: "Will this item appeal to my mother in Dewsbury?"

John Malcolm Morrell was born on April 29 1939 at Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and educated at the local grammar school. Joining the Dewsbury and District News as a reporter, he later worked for a number of other local weekly papers in Yorkshire and Somerset, and for the Bristol Evening World.

He spent a year travelling around Europe, returning to London as a freelance journalist to write feature articles. He spent some time working for The Daily Telegraph, Daily Sketch and TV Times before joining ATV in 1963 as a research assistant for On the Braden Beat.

Ever versatile, Morrell also worked with the lugubrious Edgar Lustgarten on his true crime series Scales of Justice; it was through this that he met Mike Townson, with whom he later worked on Nationwide and who introduced him to the pleasures of fell-walking.

In August 1966 Morrell joined the BBC's nightly 24 Hours current affairs programme, and the following year was the film director on Julian Pettifer's four-month assignment in the United States.

He produced the series With Cliff Michelmore on BBC-1 in 1968, and that Christmas was London studio producer for the Apollo moon flight. In 1970 Morrell teamed up again with Mike Townson as his deputy editor on the London segment of Nationwide before becoming an assistant editor on the whole sequence under the charismatic, if unpredictable, Derrick Amoore.

After his first incumbency as editor of That's Life between 1975 and 1978, Morrell began planning the BBC's coverage of the forthcoming general election.

He edited the BBC's 1979 election night programme on BBC-1, Decision '79, anchored for the first time by David Dimbleby; whisperers said that Morrell's flawless coverage had been disrupted by disgruntled technicians who wanted to rob a victorious Margaret Thatcher of her moment of glory.

After a spell at Thames Television setting up Thames News, Morrell was — unusually for the time — welcomed back to the BBC, returning in 1981 as Head of Planning.

He later reverted to programme-making as an editor of the day on Newsnight before returning to edit That's Life in 1985. Early in 1989 he was appointed deputy Head of Topical Features, and promoted to the top job in April 1990.

As Special Projects and Staff Development Co-ordinator, Network Television, Morrell was responsible for developing staff awareness and training strategy as the market-based doctrine known as "producer choice" was introduced by the then director-general, John Birt.

Finding Birt's BBC uncongenial, Morrell — who some thought seldom shone as an executive — opted for early retirement in April 1993.

Subsequently he worked for Meridian, the ITV company in the south-east, making social action programmes. He was appointed executive director of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) in 1999, a role that presented a fresh challenge and broadened his exposure, particularly in the area of film. He left in 2001 to run his own company offering media training advice to charities; latterly he had chaired media industry conventions and ran television production workshops.

A lover of the outdoors, Morrell was also a lifelong cricket enthusiast, and the moving spirit behind several BBC teams, including the That's Life XI.

John Morrell was found dead on August 28, having disappeared while out walking beside Loch Uisg during a family holiday on the Isle of Mull. He married first, in 1967 (dissolved 1979), Christine Duke. In 1981 he married her cousin, Diana Long. Both survive him with two children from the first marriage and two from the second.