Andy Kershaw, who has died aged 66 after undergoing treatment for cancer, made his name as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 by bringing world music to a wide audience, and established himself as a journalist reporting for radio on wars and horrors in far-flung places.

“I think initially Radio 1 wanted another [John] Peel,” he told the Independent in 2012, “but I got quickly bored of those awful, insipid demo tapes I was receiving from Liverpudlian indie acts, especially as I was beginning to discover properly fantastic, amazing music from Malawi, the Congo, South Africa.”

Kershaw had started his national broadcasting career on television. In 1984, he joined Mark Ellen and David Hepworth on the presenting team for Whistle Test (previously titled The Old Grey Whistle Test, with Richard Williams, Bob Harris and Annie Nightingale among a succession of solo presenters). The BBC Two programme concentrated on album music rather than the singles featured on BBC One’s Top of the Pops.

The following year, the trio joined Janice Long, Paul Gambaccini and others to host the Wembley Live Aid concert on television and radio. At the same time, Kershaw began presenting a weekly evening show on Radio 1, briefly on Saturdays, then on Thursdays until 1989. Alongside the music that fascinated him on disc were live sessions in the studio.

He and Peel, both devoted to introducing listeners to new artists, shared an office in Room 318 at Egton House, the old Radio 1 building next to Broadcasting House, with their producer John Walters, whom Kershaw described as “my confidante, my adviser and my inspiration”.

But both DJs were uncomfortable with the idea that Kershaw was being groomed as Peel’s successor, and in his 2011 autobiography, No Off Switch, Kershaw downplayed his late colleague’s reputation as a “rebel”, like himself, writing rather uncharitably: “He had no stomach whatsoever for a fight.” On air, Kershaw moved around the schedule, with his show switching to weekends, then Mondays, then Fridays, until he was dropped by Radio 1 in 2000.

Throughout his 15 years at the station, he also travelled the world to present music specials, from joining the Elvis Presley faithful on a memorial tour marking the 10th anniversary of their idol’s death, to discovering more about the music of Zimbabwe he had already featured in his shows.

The DJ was described by the Times as “the BBC’s ubiquitous musical anthropologist” and added politics to the mix when he travelled to South Africa in 1995, meeting some of its most influential musicians and discovering how the country was settling down in the year following the end of apartheid.

Eventually, he made shows for five of the main BBC national radio stations. He broadcast on Radio 4 from 1987, going on a three-part musical journey through Mali (1989), taking the political temperature in an unstable Haiti (1991), and reporting for the Today programme on the genocide in Rwanda (1994) and civil wars in Angola (1996) and Sierra Leone (2001).

On Radio 3, he co-presented the magazine show World Routes with Lucy Duran from 2000 to 2006. Highlights included his return to Haiti at the time of presidential elections to hear Caribbean-influenced music, rap and Pentecostal choirs, and a trip to Iraq shortly before 9/11 to discover the country’s classical musical tradition and the sounds of its Gypsy community.

After his show was axed by Radio 1, he found a new home at Radio 3 hosting a weekly show featuring world music, folk, country and blues (2001-07), making him the only DJ to transition successfully between the two stations. He also made the Radio 3 documentaries Songs of the Hermit Kingdom (2003) in North Korea; Iran – Axis of Evil (2004), with underground heavy metal and an illegal rave; and Christmas in Ashgabat (2005) in Turkmenistan.

But Kershaw’s career stuttered – and his regular Radio 3 show ended – following a break-up with his partner of 17 years, Juliette Banner, in 2006. When a court issued a restraining order banning him from contacting her, he turned to drink and was jailed three times for breaching it, saying he wanted to see his children. On doing so again in 2008, he went on the run and was homeless for a while, moving from one friend to another.

He eventually returned to Radio 3, teamed with Duran again, for the magazine show Music Planet (2011) and became a reporter on the BBC television programme The One Show (2012-2019).

Kershaw was born in Littleborough, Lancashire, the younger child of Eileen (nee Acton) and Jack Kershaw, who were teachers. Jack later became head of a Rochdale comprehensive and Eileen head of a nursery school. Andy’s sister, Liz, born a year earlier, had her own long-running career as a DJ in BBC national radio.

Aged 14 and attending Hulme grammar school, Oldham, Kershaw began his “stormy and endless love affair” with the music of Bob Dylan after hearing the star’s 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited, in particular the track Like a Rolling Stone.

While studying politics at Leeds University (1978-82), he was the students’ union entertainments secretary. He spent so much time booking acts, such as Ian Dury, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Dire Straits and the Clash, that he failed his degree.

After working as “backstage labour coordinator” on the final concert of the Rolling Stones’ 1982 European tour, in Leeds, Kershaw’s first job was at the city’s commercial station Radio Aire as promotions manager (1982-83). Within months, he was also presenting a late-night “alternative music” show, then a blues programme.

He moved to London in 1984 and became the singer-songwriter Billy Bragg’s driver, tour manager and roadie for gigs in Britain and mainland Europe. Kershaw was invited to be a Whistle Test presenter after meeting the television producer Trevor Dann.

On TV, he also presented episodes of the Channel 4 series Travelog (1990-98), while his newspaper journalism included an on-the-spot report for the Independent on Thailand’s Red Shirt anti-government protests in 2010.

Kershaw is survived by Sonny and Dolly, his children with Banner, and his sister.

• Andy (Andrew) Kershaw, broadcaster and journalist, born 9 November 1959; died 16 April 2026