My husband, Brian Daubney, who has died aged 81, worked for the BBC as a writer and director on various programmes, including Tomorrow’s World and Bellamy’s Britain, before setting up his own communications consultancy, Impart.
Through Impart he worked for various corporate entities, and became involved with Wilton’s Music Hall in east London, fighting to save the building from demolition, promoting it through talks and lectures and managing lettings to film companies. He was a brilliant communicator with a rare talent for quietly and unassumingly instilling confidence and self-belief in others.
Brian was born in Redcar, North Yorkshire. When he was 18 months old his father, Raymond Ecclesfield, an engineer, died. His mother, Nellie Cross, a potteries worker, later married Ron Daubney, an accountant, who formally adopted Brian.
After attending Nottingham high school he read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he directed the first performance of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, at the Edinburgh fringe for the Oxford Theatre Group.
On leaving Oxford in 1967 he joined the BBC’s Midlands region current affairs department, first in Birmingham and then in Norwich. In 1968 he moved to BBC1’s general features group, writing and researching the documentary and current affairs series Cause for Concern, before switching to the science and features department in 1969. He was responsible for more than 30 films for Tomorrow’s World, as well as studio and film direction for the first series of Pets and Vets and of Bellamy’s Britain.
While working on Tomorrow’s World Brian was the victim of a number of uncommon accidents, including falling 40ft down a ladder on the Aust Pylons across the River Severn, collapsing after inhaling aero fuel fumes on a supertanker and dropping from the tail of a Hercules aircraft on to the runway at the Boscombe Down military aircraft testing site in Wiltshire.
In 1975 he left the BBC to set up Impart, writing copy, editing, and producing film and audio visuals, as well as corporate histories. Clients included the BBC, Central Office of Information, British Overseas Trade Board, 3M, ICI, BP, various government departments, and Wilton’s Music Hall.
We met in 1985 and married in 1996. When I became director of a grant-making charity in the East End of London, Brian helped to devise and deliver some remarkable community projects for the organisation. In 2012 we traded London for Ramsgate in Kent.
Brian is survived by me and by my two daughters from a previous relationship.
