Robin Ray
- Prizes judged
Robin Ray, who died in 1998, was a silky-voiced actor, broadcaster and teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who became one of the founders of the Classic FM radio station.
Ray graduated from a successful acting career to become the host of the hugely popular television panel game Call My Bluff and subsequently a panellist on Face the Music. In both iterations he was a figure of easy charm, good looks and a depth of knowledge – especially about music (he was said to recognise every piece of Mozart music and be able to give it its catalogue, or ‘K’, number) – that somehow came as a surprise. He wrote a musical, Cafe Puccini, and as musical advisor to Classic FM from 1988 he compiled a playlist of 20,000 tracks by 1,750 composers.