Julian Keane: Long-serving BBC World Service presenter dies

BBC World Service presenter Julian Keane has died aged 57, a year after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Keane was a well-known voice on the global radio station for more than quarter of a century, featuring on the French Service, Europe Today, The World Today and The Newsroom.

He had presented the network’s Newsday programme since its launch in 2012.

The programme’s producers described him as a “warm, calm and surefooted presence in the studio.”

“Julian also presented the programme from a long list of countries, often finding himself in the middle of some of the biggest news stories we’ve covered,” they said in a tribute package.

The piece hears Julian reporting in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the run-up to elections and in Venezuela as the full scale of the economic crisis began to emerge, as well as in the Central African Republic at the height of the violence between rival militias.

Fellow broadcaster Joe Lynam called Keane “one of the best voices you will ever hear on the World Service and one of the nicest guys you will ever meet in your life.”