My friend and neighbour Toby Murcott, who has died suddenly aged 60, was a man of many gifts but he was above all a zestful explainer of difficult subjects. He was a BBC science news reporter and producer on both Radio 4 and the World Service and, even after leaving the corporation staff, ran several of radio’s most popular scientific programmes.
He produced many editions of Home Planet, which for 12 years (until 2012) used a panel to answer listeners’ environmental questions with the same good-natured erudition that epitomised Toby. He also helped launch and produced The Human Zoo (2013), on psychology, and also worked on Connect (2007), which explored people’s relationship with technology.
