Sir Robin Day, who died on August 6th was among the outstanding television journalists of his generation. He transformed the television interview, changed the relationship between politicians and television, and strove to assert balance and rationality into the medium's treatment of current affairs.
He was educated at Bembridge School, had an uneventful war in the Royal Artillery, became a captain, and went on to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1947 at the age of 24, to read law. He joined Independent Television News (ITN), at its launch in 1955, as one of its new breed of newscasters. ITN made him. It gave him, by his own account, his happiest four years in television - though he was not an instant success.
It was originally felt that he was too unsympathetic and harsh in manner, but this view changed as he developed an entirely new style of interviewing.
In the pre-Robin Day era, television interviews were almost always respectful, generally dull and stiff, often insipid. He asked the direct question pointed like a dagger at the jugular. The turning point in his career was an interview with Sir Kenneth Clark, then chairman of Independent Television, at a time when proposals were mooted to cut ITN's airtime and money. Robin Day asked him questions about the station's future. It was unprecedented that the person in ultimate charge should be questioned about his responsibilities by one of his own employees - and the impact was dramatic.
There followed a number of historic interviews which established his reputation: with ex-President Truman - "Mr President, do you regret having authorised the dropping of the atomic bomb?"; and, notably, with prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1958, in what the Daily Express called "the most vigorous cross-examination a prime minister has been subjected to in public".
In 1959, he moved to the BBC and Panorama, then the most prestigious British current affairs programme. The corporation never really made the best use of his talents, except at elections and, eventually, on Question Time, between 1979 and 1989. The fashion turned against "talking heads" and "government by debate", with which he, above all others, was identified. He was gradually sidelined, as a chairman figure who simply opened and closed programmes.
In the early 1970s, he became more deeply involved in radio, where he proved an innovator with It's Your Line, from 1970 to 1976. This was a national phone-in programme that enabled ordinary people, for the first time, to put questions directly to the prime minister and other politicians. General elections, however, were the time when all the grand inquisitor's talents as cross-examiner came on full display, when the television public saw "the scowling, frowning, glowering" Robin Day "with those cruel glasses" (Frankie Howerd's description), as well as the relieving shafts of humour.
His most satisfying role in television came with Question Time. Its success in becoming, under his chairmanship, the most popular and effective current affairs programme on British television reveals a great deal about his talents.
He was almost fixated by parliament, and seemed to think that if someone had made a great parliamentary speech, they had won a great battle, when, in fact, it was events outside parliament that were transforming British politics. Gradually, his private views became more and more conservative, at times rather narrowly nationalist, although he did not allow his personal prejudices to show in public. He believed passionately in "government by debate" and in the need for television to balance pictures of current events with reasoned analysis. Otherwise, the powerful visual impact of television would distort and trivialise. Robin Day's contribution to British public life was not confined to the media. For 25 years he campaigned tirelessly, and eventually successfully, for the televising of parliament - not in the interests of television, but of parliament itself. In his private life, he had two personalities. To those who did not know him, he could, at times, appear aggressive and insensitive, seemingly interested only in those who were important because of their fame, public success or wealth.
He sometimes found it difficult to talk naturally to intelligent women. He might, to some, have seemed the quintessential member of the all-male Garrick Club, one of his favourite haunts.
To those who knew him well, however, he was the most stimulating, amusing, convivial and warmest of companions. He was one of those rare people who was genuinely loved by his friends. He was prepared to take infinite pains on their behalf. He was also surprisingly modest; despite his obvious success in public life, he frequently talked of his career as a relative failure, because he had not achieved anything solid.
In 1965, he married Katherine Ainslie, an Australian law don at St Anne's College, Oxford, and had two sons. The marriage was dissolved in 1986.
One of the tragedies of his life was that his elder son never fully recovered from multiple skull fractures he sustained in a childhood fall.
Some years ago, he had a coronary bypass, and he suffered from breathing problems that were often evident when he was on the air. He had always fought against a tendency to put on weight.
As an undergraduate, he weighed 17 stone, and claimed that, in the course of his life, he had succeeded in losing more weight than any other person.
Robin Day is survived by his two sons.
Sir Robin Day: born 1923; died, August 2000