Mike Appleton obituary

Starting with virtually no budget and the smallest studio in the BBC’s Television Centre, Mike Appleton turned The Old Grey Whistle Test into the most effective vehicle for the burgeoning rock culture of the 1970s. A new generation of musicians, with progressive rock groups at one end of the scale and solo singer-songwriters at the other, found a home in a programme that disdained the chart-bound format of Top of the Pops, opting for a low-key, intimate style personified by its most celebrated presenter, “Whispering Bob” Harris.

Appleton, who has died aged 83, was a warm, relaxed and convivial character who treated his production team like a family. Musicians and the record industry appreciated his keenness to present unknown or overlooked performers alongside the bigger names. Many artists significantly expanded their following through exposure on the show, whose distinctive title sequence featured an animated starman and the plaintive harmonica theme of Area Code 615’s Stone Fox Chase. Broadcast live on BBC Two, the minority channel, last thing on Tuesday nights, it could take advantage of an open-ended format.

Budgetary constraints led to the early shows, on which I was the first presenter, alternating live or pre-recorded performances with album tracks accompanied by silent-movie clips from the film historian Philip Jenkinson’s extensive archives.

Rather than create just another pop show, Appleton opted for a magazine format, using the presenters’ journalistic skills in interviews with artists and the occasional group discussion on a topic of the day: the problems of pop festivals, for instance, or the potential of the newly discovered pub rock as an agent for change.

The music, however, always came first, and not even the confines of the tiny studio could hinder the likes of Curtis Mayfield, John Martyn, the Wailers, Little Feat, Dr John, David Bowie, Bill Withers and Ry Cooder from delivering indelible performances.

Success loosened the BBC’s purse strings, and eventually Appleton was regularly producing special editions devoted to artists filmed on location: the Rolling Stones rehearsing for their Exile on Main Street tour in a Montreux cinema in 1972, for instance, or Bruce Springsteen in Philadelphia in 1984. Bigger studios were made available, and eventually the show moved to a sound stage at Shepperton film studios.

Graduating from producer to editor as the programme’s reputation grew, in 1985 he was invited by Bob Geldof to supervise the televising of the UK end of Live Aid from Wembley Stadium. The BBC’s outside broadcast facilities and the Whistle Test’s then presenters, Richard Skinner, Mark Ellen, Andy Kershaw and David Hepworth, were employed to beam the 11-hour show – featuring Bowie, Elton John, the Who, U2, Dire Straits, Sting, Queen, Sade and many others – to an international audience.

By then the Whistle Test had surmounted the problems caused when the eruption of punk rock had made Harris’s gentle sincerity seem obsolete. Standing on his principles, he made clear on air his disapproval of having to introduce the riot of satin-and-tat loucheness that was the New York Dolls. After Harris was assaulted in a London club by a group of punks including Sid Vicious, a change of presenters – first to Annie Nightingale, then to Ellen and Hepworth – allowed Appleton to update the tone and content of the show, now featuring the likes of Blondie, the Ramones and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Michael was born in Cliftonville, Kent, to Betty (nee Wilmot), an artist, and Bob, an insurance company executive. After the family moved to Bristol in 1946 he attended Wells Cathedral school. During national service in the mid-1950s he was stationed in Germany, where he learned how to record jazz bands playing in a bierkeller.

In 1958 he joined the BBC in Bristol, working on radio programmes, before transferring to BBC TV in London. Having absorbed the technical side, he moved into production on Late Night Line-Up, a nightly arts magazine show produced by Rowan Ayers. Under David Attenborough, the controller of BBC Two, Colour Me Pop and Disco 2 represented Late Night Line-Up’s early attempts to incorporate rock music into the coverage.

Appleton cut his teeth on those shows before being given the chance to take over Tuesday nights with a new rock series in the autumn of 1971. He gave it a clearly defined character, beginning with an eccentric choice of title. As he found himself explaining countless times in the years to come, The Old Grey Whistle Test referred to the possibly apocryphal music business habit of testing the potential of a new song or record by playing it to the building’s elderly doormen – the “old greys” – to see if the tune was memorable.

The arrival of Janet Street-Porter as BBC Two’s new head of youth and entertainment programmes in 1987 spelled the end for the programme after 16 seasons. The following year, having returned to Wembley to produce the broadcast of the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Concert, featuring Sting, the Eurythmics, Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, Appleton left the BBC to join the Landscape Channel, taking with him his collection of gold and platinum discs given by grateful artists (including Queen and Springsteen), along with his Bafta award for the Live Aid broadcast.

He had been an avid collector since childhood, and a barn at his home in Surrey became a museum in which he displayed what was said to be the best collection of Edison phonographs and wind-up gramophones in Europe.

In 1966 he married Lulu Lewin, who ran a fashion boutique in Hampstead, north London, then worked for the BBC’s drama department, and as a Fleet Street journalist, before training as a psychotherapist. Mike’s younger brother, Tim Appleton, is an ecologist and the founder of Birdfair. They survive him, with his daughter, Amy, and three grandchildren.

• Michael John Wilmot Appleton, television producer, born 30 December 1936; died 2 April 2020