This is taken from The Guardian:

Leslie Tucker
by Christopher Bell
Tuesday 24 April 2012 13.48 BST

My friend and former colleague Leslie Tucker, who has died aged 86, left school in Ramsgate, Kent, during the second world war, expecting a call-up for the Navy. Instead, and somewhat to his surprise, he found himself cast as a BBC Yit, a Youth in Training, and posted in 1943 to work at Aldenham, a rather splendid and stately building in Hertfordshire, hastily requisitioned to serve as the wartime base for BBC broadcasts to Latin America and the Arab world.

The work, with a pattern of night and dawn shifts, was demanding, but at times cricket could be played on the front lawn, there was said to be a swimming pool and the multilingual staff ensured that working at Aldenham was as stimulating as it was important. It was there that Leslie met his future wife, Edna, and many of their wartime colleagues remained friends long after Aldenham's return to civilian life after 1945.

By then, Leslie had become an experienced programme engineer and producers in the overseas services in London increasingly found that the man behind their studio panel was not only helpful but often able to supply information that programmes needed. For he was always formidably well read and knowledgable equally about jazz and classical music. One Spanish colleague described him as "a part-time renaissance man". Someone more senior then noticed the quality of the Tucker voice and the former Yit became a newsreader and announcer, one of a notable group – male and female – whom World Service listeners towards the end of the last century expected to be clear, calm and authoritative. As indeed they were.

Throughout nearly 40 years with the BBC and whatever the job, Leslie remained a marvellous companion and a notably humane and shrewd manager. Home life at Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, with Edna and their sons, Ben and John, was as full and diverse as it was with BBC. More reading, of course, then theatre, music and expeditions to Spain, plus leading a constantly winning team in quiz nights at the local pub, where apparently (and no doubt as a devoted Guardian reader) he was known as "Red Les". His home was full of books, recordings and a large framed map of Ascension Island, where the BBC had once sent him for some months.

Edna died in 1994. He is survived by his sons