Tributes have been paid to long-serving BBC Radio Leeds journalist Andrew Evans, who died suddenly at the age of 57.<\/p>\n
The father-of-two, who had worked at the BBC for 30 years, was known to audiences as “Producer Andy”.<\/p>\n
Andrew, who produced the breakfast show presented by Rima Ahmed, died on 21 June while on holiday in France.<\/p>\n
Simon Monk, executive editor of the station, described him as “a natural in every way and a thoroughly, thoroughly great person with it”.<\/p>\n
During his long career with the corporation, Andy had worked with and mentored numerous behind-the-scenes staff as well as presenters. <\/p>\n
He had also worked as the station’s news editor, covering some of the region’s biggest stories, as well as spending time in Nigeria as part of a BBC World Service Trust outreach project.<\/p>\n
Rima announced her friend and colleague’s death during a pre-recorded segment on Wednesday’s breakfast show.<\/p>\n
She said: “It’s with a deep sense of loss that I have to tell you that our beloved Andrew Evans died suddenly on Sunday… all of us here at BBC Radio Leeds are absolutely devastated.”<\/p>\n
The presenter, who had worked with Andy since 2022, also spoke about the love he had for his family. <\/p>\n
“Producer Andy is what I called him here, but he is also known by quite a few names – dad, was one of them to Tom and Ollie, who he was just utterly mad about,” she said. <\/p>\n
“He was also known as Andrew, husband to Emma. <\/p>\n
“Emma, he referred to you on air as missus, with such affection… you were the centre of his universe and he was so content with the life you both built together.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tributes have been paid to long-serving BBC Radio Leeds journalist Andrew Evans, who died suddenly at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-659712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}