The 50 best BBC radio broadcasters of all time

She began presenting Woman’s Hour in 1987, but Jenni Murray’s top ten placing is only partly a reflection of her longevity. She embodies the spirit of the programme — warm, supportive, inclusive, across every women’s issue going.

And she’s had to be tough because the show is always exploring sensitive areas of life and gives rise to strong feelings. For a while, her breast cancer made her the story, but she’s never let herself be defined by the experience.

9 Eddie Mair

Calm amid the storm

We’re proud of Eddie at RT and his brilliant weekly column. The PM presenter is an equally gifted broadcaster with an astonishing concentration of talents: nimbleness, a sharp wit and a bulls**t detector like no other.

His sensitivity made his interviews last year with a dying Steve Hewlett utterly memorable. A very special radio great.

8 Humphrey Lyttelton

‘Mornington Crescent!’

The longtime I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue chairman (who died in 2008) barely had to say a word to get people laughing. It was all in the anticipation — we knew an outrageous double entendre was on its way and that with Humph’s deadpan delivery it would be sidesplittingly funny.

He had a musician’s timing, was a top jazz trumpeter and presented jazz on Radio 2. You can argue over what constitutes radio “greatness”, but for sheer lovability, Humph surely has no peer.

7 Jane Garvey

Fearless champion

It’s a mark of the central place that Woman’s Hour occupies on Radio 4 — and in the hearts of listeners — that two of its presenters make it into the top ten. And as gender issues have risen up the agenda, Garvey can take huge credit for keeping Woman’s Hour bang up to date.

A fearless champion in areas that affect women’s lives, Garvey’s also played a huge 5 Live role over the years, and she attracted even more admirers in July for the lead she took in women presenters’ response to the BBC’s gender pay gap.

6 Kenny Everett

All in the best possible taste...

Kenny Everett died in 1995 and his glory days at the BBC did not extend past the 1980s. Yet here he is, his legendary status undiminished. The loosest of loose cannons, he was the essence of “zany”, the embodiment of “manic”, and he made radio so anarchic that it could not fail to get him into trouble.

He was forever being sacked. One of the original Radio 1 disc jockeys in 1967, he was hired to break the rules, but nobody knew quite how spectacularly he would do so. A vocal genius, king of the jingle, a true wild man of radio — and still treasured.