This is taken from The Guardian:

Bob Humphrys
The face of sport on Welsh television
by Paul Rees
Thursday August 21 2008

Bob Humphrys, who has died aged 56, was for 19 years, until his retirement last February, the face of sport on television in Wales. While he had to focus on the staples of rugby and football, he was a journalist who steadfastly championed pursuits which did not enjoy a high profile, and he invariably ended his bulletins on the nightly news programme, Wales Today, with an off-beat segment. The Vale of Glamorgan cyclist Nicole Cooke, who won Great Britain's first gold medal in the Beijing Olympics, was introduced to the Welsh public by Humphrys eight years ago. His passion was for sport in its purest form, the taking part.

He was the younger brother of John Humphrys, the presenter of the Radio 4 programme, Today; but while they enjoyed a close personal relationship, as journalists they were polar opposites. Bob's response to a closed door was not to shoulder-charge it but to try to coax whoever was on the other side to open up. Tough questions were masked by a smile and, if he took more pleasure in unveiling budding talents such as Cooke rather than splashing around in the murky waters of Welsh rugby politics, he had a nose for a story. He preferred to end his bulletins on an upbeat note, signing off with a quip rather than a sombre expression, and, as a gregarious individual, relished getting out of the studio to report on the build-up to occasions surrounded by a crowd.

Despite its radical tradition, Wales is in many ways a conservative nation, and rugby union, even in the dog days of the early 1990s, has dominated media reporting. Humphrys' lasting contribution to sports journalism in the country was to broaden its boundaries, championing pastimes which in the main had gone unreported. He was three times voted the Welsh sports journalist of the year, and if there were those who felt that the accolade should have been the preserve of someone who broke major stories, it was a fitting recognition that Humphrys reflected sport's wide spectrum rather than just its big names and events.

After Humphrys left BBC Wales six months ago following a shake-up in the organisation, he started work on his autobiography, Not a Proper Journalist, which was due to be published in November. It was a typically self-deprecating title, referring to the field of his reporting and his style. But he was one of the exceptions in journalism who made the switch from print to broadcasting seamlessly.

Born and brought up in Splott, a Cardiff suburb, he was educated at Cardiff high school and gained a degree in history at the University of Exeter. After graduating, he joined the Western Mail, where he was the paper's chief features writer before joining BBC Radio Wales as a reporter and presenter on its formation at the end of 1978 . In 1980, he became the chief reporter for BBC Wales' television current affairs programme, Week In Week Out, before, in 1989, assuming the position for which he became best known, Wales Today's sports reporter.

It was while writing his book on a laptop in the kitchen of his home in Cardiff last May that Humphrys complained to a doctor friend of pains in his shoulder and chest, feeling they were symptoms of bad posture; but a scan revealed a malignant tumour on his lung. "It seemed unjust," he wrote a few hours after the diagnosis in a feature for the Daily Mail. "In my life, I'd had just one puff of a cigarette when I was 10 and spent all of the following day throwing up." The long article was free of self-pity and, despite its grave subject, had the lightness of touch which so characterised his reporting and which had given him the reputation of being one of the best scriptwriters at BBC Wales.

He is survived by his wife Julie and their three children, Claire, Emma and Jamie.

· George Robert Humphrys, television reporter, born April 16 1952; died August 18 2008