My friend Bernard Adams, who has died aged 86, produced more than 20 serialised television documentaries for the BBC from the 1960s to the 1990s, mainly for schools and continuing education programmes. These included Better Badminton (1979), a look at a sport in which he had excelled as a national junior champion, and Berliners (1990), on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Following retirement from the BBC he went on to write five books and two plays including Fierce Love (2022), a biography of Mary O’ Malley, the founder-director of the Lyric Players theatre, Belfast, and The Fall (2013), a play commemorating the 150th anniversary of his local church, Christ Church, East Sheen, in south-west London.

Bernard was born in Dublin, to Barney, a vet, and Marie (nee Rainsford), a housewife. He was a boarder at Portora Royal school in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, before studying English and Spanish at Trinity College Dublin in the late 1950s. He started his career in 1962 as a reporter on the Belfast Telegraph, where he met Mona Logan, who worked there as a secretary.

They married in 1965 and decided to try their luck in London, where Bernard got a job writing for the Radio Times magazine, before switching to BBC TV as a producer and working in that role until his retirement in 1994. Afterwards he continued with freelance work while pursuing his other writing.

In addition to his warmth, kindness and generosity, Bernard had a remarkable wit.

In 2018, Mona won a seat on Richmond council in south-west London and became deputy mayor, after which Bernard accompanied her at the many events she attended.

Mona died in 2019; he is survived by their daughters, Polly and Amy, five grandchildren and one great-grandson.