David Jacobs (broadcaster)

David Lewis Jacobs CBE (19 May 1926 – 2 September 2013) was a British broadcaster. He was the presenter of the BBC Television series Juke Box Jury in the 1960s, and chaired the long-running BBC Radio 4 topical discussion series Any Questions?. His earlier radio work included small acting parts: over the years he played himself or the characters of presenters in film, television and radio productions. Jacobs finally stepped down as a BBC Radio 2 presenter shortly before his death in 2013, his career having spanned more than 65 years. Jacobs was born to a Jewish family, the youngest of three sons of Jeanette and David Jacobs senior, in Streatham Hill, London, and educated at Belmont College and Strand School. In his early years the family was affluent, but his father, a Covent Garden fruit importer, was bankrupted in 1939 after suffering ill-health for a decade, and the family soon lost their home. This forced his youngest son to leave school at 14, and Jacobs took up various short-term jobs, before he served in the Royal Navy from 1944 to 1947, and performed on the popular BBC General Forces Programme Navy Mixture in 1944. He became an announcer with the British Forces Broadcasting Service and was chief announcer on Radio SEAC in Ceylon (1945–47). Jacobs was later assistant station director. A BBC staff announcer in the early 1950s, his voice intoned the title for many of the 53 episodes of the space adventure series Journey Into Space.