My friend and colleague Terry Doyle, who has died aged 73, was a dynamic television programme maker who made a fine contribution to language learning in Britain.
Terry made television series for the BBC introducing Russian, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese to British audiences. They all had linked learning materials and brought other cultures engagingly into millions of British sitting rooms. His work had a strong documentary element and was as much concerned with people as with language.
Terry was born in Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, but soon moved south to England with his parents, Joe, who worked for an engineering firm, and his wife, Frances (nee Gibson), who had a job in a knitting factory. He went to Alleyne’s grammar school in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and then studied modern languages at Cambridge before gaining a teaching qualification from the University of Sussex, where he later worked after a year at the University of Moscow studying language teaching.
He joined the BBC in 1970 in the further education section of its television department, where among the programmes he made were Tele-Journal, which ran for 10 years on BBC2 from 1978-88, Excuse My French (1984), Sueños World Spanish (1995), and Japanese Language and People (1991).
Terry’s concern to create empathy showed most clearly in the BBC series Russian, Language and People in 1980, which gave him the chance to put ordinary Russians on screen, talking about everyday matters. The Soviet authorities were wary of the venture, including the proposal that Terry use a Soviet film crew. In the course of each exhausting day of long filming trips he had to deal with suspicious government minders while using his natural warmth and charm to ask Russian men and women to talk to him in the street, in outdoor swimming baths, at wedding celebrations and in various other settings.
A perfectionist, he was nonetheless always fun to work with and was sparky, stimulating company. His work took him all around the world and sightings of him in the BBC’s offices were rare. Heathrow airport seemed his natural habitat.
With his second wife, the psychotherapist Gigi Gatti, Terry owned a tiny flat in Chelsea and homes in Italy and Greece. In later life he had Parkinson’s disease and spent his last days in care.
Gigi died in 2003. He is survived by Matt, his son from his first marriage, to Vivien Walker, which ended in divorce, and by two grandchildren, Zack and Ellie-May.
