Fred MacAulay was a key figure in the revival and survival of Gaelic as a living language in Scotland. For the best part of 30 years — as senior Gaelic producer and then manager of BBC Radio Highland — he cajoled and chivvied the BBC round, over or through the obstacles that had initially frustrated his ambition to create a major Gaelic radio network, and at least a partial service of television programmes.

Many in BBC Scotland, let alone the distant powers in London, were indifferent if not actively hostile to the use of scarce resources to boost a minority language — and, as some thought, a dying one. But MacAulay used a potent amalgam of charm, fuss and guile to fight what he saw as a deplorably unenlightened attitude, and he was eventually fortunate in having a series of sympathetic controllers of BBC Scotland, who helped him to achieve the bulk of his aims.

Fred MacAulay was born in North Uist on New Year’s Day 1925, of what he described as a “proud mix of fishing and crofting stock with an academic infusion” — all Gaelic-speaking since the mists of time. He won a triple bursary to Inverness Royal Academy and entrance to Edinburgh University. In 1943 he joined the Royal Corps of Signals and in 1945 he was commissioned into the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, serving with their 2nd Battalion in Italy until 1947, an experience he never regretted.

Returning to Edinburgh, he graduated in Celtic studies, following this up with a diploma in phonetics. He joined the Linguistic Survey of Scotland to do research on the different (not to say rival) dialects of Gaelic, and then joined the BBC’s minuscule Gaelic department in 1954.

It was soon evident not only that he was a gifted producer but that he had a wonderful broadcasting voice, clear and friendly, “like a neighbour dropping in”. He became a household name in the Highlands and islands. When one old lady in Harris was thinking of an excuse for not having biscuits with the tea for her guest, she said: “I left them beside the wireless and Fred MacAulay must have eaten them.”

With seniority came the chance to recruit an expanded staff and to fashion them into a dedicated team — creative, imaginative, sometimes difficult. He himself was famous for his brushes with bureaucracy. He was once challenged to defend a mileage claim which appeared to be well in excess of the map measurement.

“What you do not understand,” he replied, “is that Highland roads are very narrow, with few passing places. My claim takes account of the many occasions on which I have had to reverse for long distances. I enclose an additional claim for neck strain.”

Short, bulky, but light on his feet both physically and mentally, heavily bearded, immensely articulate in both languages, he was a formidable force. He had been an ardent football player in his youth, and developed a particularly devastating form of sliding tackle. He used its intellectual equivalent to deal with opposition throughout his life.

The breakthrough came with the realisation that Gaelic broadcasting on VHF was a practical possibility and that a major expansion of programmes could be engineered without risking a backlash from the monoglot majority of listeners to mainstream Radio Scotland. The idea was not immediately popular — “very hard to find” was the initial response — but the benefits quickly became apparent. The opening in 1979 of Radio nan Eilan (Radio of the Isles), based in Stornoway, was a landmark, its transmitters carrying a full service throughout the Gaelic heartland.

Television, too, was coming of age, and the acceptance of Can Seo — Say This for network transmission on BBC1 as one of its major language series gave MacAulay intense satisfaction, and brought a heavy mail bag concerning accent and dialect.

He moved to Inverness in 1980 as manager of Radio Highland. By now generally regarded as Scotland’s foremost Gaelic broadcasting figure, he was able to retire in 1983 in the rewarding knowledge that his 30-year campaign had achieved results. He had once recorded the last living speaker of Manx; he hoped there was now no fear of Gaelic going the same way — though he would have been concerned about the newly released census figures, which show a marked decline.

In retirement he continued to broadcast, to write Gaelic verse under a pseudonym, to tend his garden and to work for the Balnain Trust, of which he was chairman from 1986 to 1996, raising the best part of £1 million to restore Balnain House, the last complete Georgian house in Inverness, now the home of Highland music and owned by the National Trust for Scotland.

In 1999 he received the Radio Lifetime Achievement Award from the Celtic Film and Television Festival, and in 2000 he became Honorary Chieftain of the Gaelic Society of Inverness.

His wife, Sybil, gave him unstinting support, in sickness and in health, and survives him, along with a son and two daughters.

Fred MacAulay, broadcaster and campaigner for Gaelic, born on January 1, 1925. He died of cancer on February 15, 2003, aged 78.