David Hatch was a mainstay of BBC Radio for some 30 years. His early training had not particularly marked him for this: the fourth son of a Yorkshire vicar, he went to Cambridge with theology in mind. There, through the aegis of the Cambridge Footlights, he fell in with John Cleese, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor, and with them took a revue show, A Clump of Plinths (later renamed Cambridge Circus) to the West End and Broadway in 1963.

The following year he took the straight-man role in the radio series I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. He also did six months on the West End stage, and then played New York. He reckoned this new life to be “better than yet more Latin”.

But he was swiftly drawn to life on the other side of the microphone. He joined the BBC staff in the mid1960s, and over ten years in radio light entertainment built a solid reputation for innovation and effective producing. He was the moving spirit behind Week Ending and Just A Minute; he cast his net wide, and high on the list of passing recruits who became lifelong friends were Terry Wogan, Richard Briers and David Jason.

He spent the late 1970s running radio in Manchester, and then headed the light entertainment department from London. He moved into management, and ran Radio 2 for three years from 1980, switching then to Radio 4. Not everything he did was lauded: his experiment with a roller-coaster sequence on Radio 4 proved too much for his morning audience, but his undergraduate humour did not desert him. “Radio 4,” he wrote, “should be a daily anthem of joy – and anthem is as anthem does.”

He resisted the temptations of television: unlike many of his radio colleagues, he was not restless or frustrated in his medium. Television, it was true, had more money, but radio commanded a deep loyalty from listeners. He was for the most part uncomplaining about the traffic of talent out of radio and into television. He saw radio as an important training ground, from which the best would inevitably move on, be it John Lloyd or Steve Coogan. It was, however, a matter of irritation for him that his television colleagues failed to make the best of this nursery, even on occasions allowing BBC radio shows to find a visual outlet on ITV. He held that comedy was too rare and precious a commodity to be so lightly set aside.

The BBC’s habit of looking to television for its radio chiefs amused Hatch. He would cheerfully wonder who the BBC would next send down the road from White City to Broadcasting House. He soldiered on with good grace under Aubrey Singer, Dick Francis and Brian Wenham, finally getting the top job himself in 1987.

As the first managing director to face competition from networked commercial radio, he sought to tidy up: he corralled sport, Open University, schools, education and new children’s programming into a newly mixed Radio 5. The soufflé failed to rise, however, and Hatch came under increasing pressure to make way for rolling news. His resistance to this put him on a collision course with John Birt, then operational boss of BBC journalism and shortly to become director-general. It was widely assumed that when Birt took over, Hatch would go.

In fact, an intervention from the Heritage Secretary, David Mellor, added an unexpected twist. Mellor argued that the BBC could ill-afford to lose one of its few managers with a human face, and Hatch stayed as special adviser to Birt. He peppered him with morning memos designed to lighten the onward march of Birtism.

Notwithstanding that his Radio 5 had been removed in favour of the newsy Radio 5 Live, Hatch stayed loyal to the new regime. His support proved crucial when Birt’s career nearly foundered on the question of his tax status.

Hatch was asked to redefine the BBC’s regional priorities, and find ways to put more work away from London. This led to its fair share of idiocies as programmes were biked hither and thither to fulfil quotas, but Hatch felt that the scheme’s heart was in the right place. He had always seen that a strong BBC needed to draw inspiration and insight from the length and breadth of the land.

Some thought Hatch too much a man for all seasons. The truth was that he treated most political considerations with insouciance. It was therefore natural for him to rub along with the chopping and changing of policy fashion simply to get on with the task in hand. That, as he saw it, was the role of the public servant.

The affection expressed for him when he finally left the BBC in the summer of 1995 was genuine and widespread. Hatch was not without a fondness for the louche, but in him it sat happily alongside a love of the Church. In 1995 he became a justice of the peace in Aylesbury and the next year was appointed CBE.

In 2000 he became chairman of the Services Sound and Vision Corporation and, to the surprise of some, the Parole Board. He fought hard against budget cuts that meant prisoners seeking release could not be properly interviewed, and was incensed when Home Office researchers concluded that conducting interviews did not make much difference to Parole Board decisions. His warnings bore bitter fruit in 2006 after a number of killings by men freed in error.

Hatch was knighted in 2004. He will be best remembered for his steadfast commitment to radio, especially in those gloomy years when it seemed the good times were gone for ever. Hatch rightly suspected that television would lose some of its lustre, and it is largely to his credit that BBC Radio regained confidence in itself. As he always asserted, radio makes better pictures.

His first wife, Ann, predeceased him. He is survived by his second wife, Mary, two sons and a daughter.

Sir David Hatch, CBE, managing director of BBC Radio, 1987-93, and chairman of the Parole Board of England and Wales, 2000-04, was born on May 7, 1939. He died on June 13, 2007, aged 68