Peter Jay, the former BBC economics journalist and diplomat, has died at the age of 87, his family has announced.

Colleagues in the political and media world paid tributes after he died “peacefully at home” on Sunday. Jay was one of the country’s foremost economics commentators of his time, spending time as the economics editor for the BBC and the Times.

He was also a presenter of ITV’s Weekend World, a chair during the launch of the television company TV-am, a director of the Bank of England and chief of staff to Robert Maxwell for three-and-a-half years.

Jay’s family said in a statement: “He was a much-loved husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, friend and colleague.”

He was controversially appointed as the UK’s ambassador to Washington in 1977 by his then father-in-law, James Callaghan, who was prime minister, leading to Conservative protests of nepotism.

David Owen, who was foreign secretary at the time, said: “Jim Callaghan did not get on well with the sitting ambassador in Washington so it was obvious there should be a change.

“I was free to appoint someone better suited to the new Carter administration and particularly [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, his national security adviser. I chose on merit Peter Jay and never had any cause to regret it, though I warned the prime minister the charge of nepotism would arise.

“Before long he was playing tennis regularly with Brzezinski, getting on well with the young Georgians close to the president and in every respect proved to be an excellent ambassador.”

Carter was from Georgia and had been governor of the state before his presidency.

Faisal Islam, the current economics editor at the BBC, paid tribute to his predecessor in a post on social media.

Islam wrote on X: “Famously told colleague one of his complex pieces was written for an audience of 3, & he wasn’t one of them … in room with LBJ and Okun when they came up with the definition of recession. Criticised the ‘bias against understanding’.

“Diplomat. Broadcaster. RIP”.

Jay was born in February 1937, the son of Douglas Jay, who was president of the Board of Trade under Harold Wilson. His mother, Peggy, was a leading light of the London county council.

After national service in the Royal Navy, he graduated with a first-class honours degree in politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford. He married Margaret Callaghan in 1961 in a ceremony at the House of Commons’ crypt chapel.

After two years in Washington from 1977 to 1979, the incoming Conservative government called time on Jay’s appointment. At that time it emerged that Margaret was having an affair with Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post journalist who helped expose the Watergate scandal.

Jay and Callaghan had a son and two daughters together, but separated in 1986. Her relationship with Bernstein was immortalised in the novel Heartburn by Bernstein’s wife, Nora Ephron, and subsequently became a Hollywood film in 1986 starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.

• Additional reporting by PA Media