Bob Rust, TV weatherman

A native of Doncaster, he held the position for 13 years, until his retirement in 1996.

A professional meteorologist who came to television relatively late in his career, he was among the first of the new breed of weatherman who became celebrities in their own right, bantering with the news presenters and peppering their forecasts with humour. The current BBC forecaster, Paul Hudson, with whom Rust wrote a book called Weather or Not, credited him as an inspiration.

He had stepped into the spotlight as TV was moving from static weather charts to electronic graphics. The first manifestation of the new technology on his forecasts was a mechanical cube which was supposed to rotate behind him but quite often failed to do so.

Accommodating and flexible, he was required to adjust the length of his reports at a moment’s notice. One one occasion, a colleague recalled, upon being told he had only five seconds, he contented himself with pointing to the cube and saying, “This is the weather”.

He is survived by his wife, Shirley, two children and three grandchildren.