The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2015 - TV

Luisa Omielan, Comedian
Photographed at LIBRARY private members club St Martin’s Lane by Rebecca Reid
16 September 2015

Cillian Murphy

Actor

“Is Cillian Murphy too handsome to play a brute like Peaky Blinders’ Tommy Shelby?” one critic asked. Viewers had no problem with the brooding Irishman in the BBC2 gangster drama. Praised for his “eye-poppingly athletic” performance in Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk at the National Theatre, Murphy, who lives in north-west London with his artist wife Yvonne McGuinness, will battle the elements in Ron Howard’s Christmas shipwreck disaster movie, In The Heart of the Sea.

Martin Freeman

Actor

From Sherlock to The Hobbit, the rise of the “everyman” actor appears unstoppable. Fourteen years on from The Office, Freeman’s unassuming demeanour now opens Hollywood doors. He plays a Scottish journalist who falls for Tina Fey’s American war correspondent in his next film, The Taliban Shuffle. Married to actress Amanda Abbington, Freeman appeared in a high-profile Labour Party election broadcast.

Gillian Anderson

Actress

It’s a testament to the variety of roles Gillian Anderson has performed across film, television and the stage that the globe-straddling success of The X-Files has become almost a footnote in her career. Olivier-nominated for her roles in A Doll’s House and A Streetcar Named Desire, the Chicago-born actress will return for a third series as Stella Gibson, the enigmatic DSI, in the BBC2 drama The Fall. Currently co-writing a “revolutionary self-help guide” for women, Anderson returns to the role of special agent Dana Scully for an X-Files reboot next year.

Gillian Anderson REX

Toby Jones

Actor

From The Hunger Games to metal-detecting hobbyist, critics have marvelled at the quiet genius of the versatile actor with melancholy features, including his portrayal of a Stoke City fan with learning difficulties in the Bafta-winning BBC drama Marvellous. The Hammersmith-born Jones will play an arrogant banker in an adaptation of Capital, John Lanchester’s best-selling novel, set during the 2008 financial crash, which will be a landmark BBC1 drama.

Hugo Blick

Screenwriter

His angular features are still recognised from his role as the young Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman (“You ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?”) but Blick has morphed into the master of atmospheric, noir television drama. The Shadow Line explored police corruption. The Honourable Woman addressed the Middle East without partisanship. He is now researching his next major project, which will be set at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Charlotte Rampling

Actress

Set screens alight alongside Tom Courtenay in the understated film 45 Years, in which the sapphire wedding of an ordinary Norfolk couple is complicated by a discovery about the husband’s long-dead previous lover. Rampling’s sensual froideur has taken her from an emblem of Swinging London in 1965’s Georgy Girl via Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories to a TV drama regular, appearing in Broadchurch, Dexter and Restless.

Charlotte Rampling, Actress Rebecca Reid

Harry and Jack Williams

Screenwriters

For eight weeks, viewers were gripped by the question of whether grief-stricken father Tony Hughes would find the truth about his son in the BBC1 series, The Missing. It was a startling breakthrough for the London team of Harry, 36, and Jack Williams, 34. The sons of author Nigel Williams (The Wimbledon Poisoner), the duo have crafted a new murder thriller for BBC1, One of Us, and are guarding the secrets of a second series of The Missing.

Steven Moffat

Writer

The Bafta-winning Sherlock will return to the Victorian-era for a Christmas special according to morsels revealed by the screenwriter. However the next full series won’t even begin shooting until next spring due to Benedict Cumberbatch’s commitments. Doctor Who however will remain on screen for at least another five years, promises the showrunner, who marshals two of the BBC’s most valuable global brands.

Claire Foy

Actress

No stranger to costume drama, having starred in Little Dorrit and Upstairs Downstairs, Foy admitted to battling her emotions while filming Anne Boleyn’s execution scene in the mesmerising adaptation of Wolf Hall. Coming next is another regal role, playing The Queen in the big-budget Netflix series The Crown.

Jed Mercurio

Writer

There will be blood, lots of it, Mercurio warned, before his Sky1 medical series Critical aired. The graphic series, which followed one patient’s experience in the crucial hour after suffering a major trauma each week, took the hospital drama into uncharted territory. The Lancastrian creator of Bodies and Cardiac Arrest puts an armed response unit on the rack in the third series of his twist-filled police corruption drama, Line of Duty.

Gemma Chan

Actress

As servile synth Anita, Chan gave one of the most eye-catching performances in Humans, Channel 4’s biggest drama hit for years. The series has already been recommissioned. Former model Chan, who had earlier roles in Fresh Meat and Sherlock, has spoken out about the sexism and racism that still afflicts the film industry. Her partner is comedian Jack Whitehall and she is classically trained on violin and piano.

Gemma Chan Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Michelle Dockery

Actress

What next for Michelle Dockery, who plays Downton Abbey’s ice-cool Lady Mary Crawley, now that the costume drama blockbuster nears its end? Like her co-star Hugh Bonneville, the east London-born Dockery has already progressed onto the big screen — with roles in action thriller Non-Stop and Anna Karenina. She has considerable talents as a jazz singer too, which landed her on the bill at the 50th anniversary of Ronnie Scott’s.

Phoebe Fox

Actress

Fox played Vanessa Bell in BBC2’s Life in Squares, a character at the centre of the tangled romances of Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury set. The Rada-trained actress has already appeared in The Musketeers and The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. Raised in Middlesex, she made murder-mystery movies with her sister and developed a niche playing angst-ridden teens in the theatre.

Kit Harington

Actor

With legions of fans, including Ed Sheeran and David Cameron, there’s no denying the global dominance of HBO’s Game of Thrones. If Harington is worried about escaping its shadow, his recent lead roles in swords and sandals epic Pompeii and the film version of Spooks — as well as the gun-slinging thriller Brimstone lined up for 2016 — suggest the Acton-born actor will be just fine.

Dominic West

Actor

Came to international attention in 2002 playing Baltimore cop Joe McNulty. Since then West has kept his feet on both sides of the Atlantic with parts in Fifties period drama The Hour and US hit The Affair, which returns for a second season this autumn. The perfect English gentleman, he was also Richard Burton to Helena Bonham Carter’s Elizabeth Taylor and can be spotted on the town with his wife, landscape designer and Irish aristocrat Catherine Fitzgerald.

Armando Iannucci

Screenwriter

The Scottish satirist has balanced performing and producing during his career, but latterly has spent more time behind the screen on American political satire Veep, which followed the success of its UK cousin, The Thick of It (with fewer expletives). In the last year, however, he has quit Veep and his latest project is directing a movie, The Death of Stalin, an adaptation of a graphic novel of the same name. As someone who has worked with Stewart Lee, Steve Coogan and Chris Morris, Iannucci remains at the heart of quality comedy. Whatever he does will be distinctive.

Ian Hislop

Private Eye, editor

A star of the BBC’s Have I Got News For You for a quarter of a century, but his commitment to satire goes back even further. He worked for Private Eye straight after Oxford and has been editor since 1986. Proved he has lost none of his edge with the “Woman Has Baby” cover, when Kate gave birth to Prince George, and controversially portrayed Rebekah Brooks as a Halloween horror figure at the start of the hacking trial.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Actress

Louis-Dreyfus has become one of US comedy’s most cherished female comedians. She might still be best known as Elaine from Seinfeld but Armando Iannucci spotted her brilliance and impeccable timing for a role she was born to play, vice-president Selina Meyer in HBO’s Veep — including a London episode in which she got caught out in a pub. Louis-Dreyfus’s Emmy-winning performance means that she is the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series — Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Veep.

Bridget Christie

Comedian and broadcaster

The winner of the 2013 Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award has become the flag-bearer for feminism in stand-up comedy. The Gloucester-born gagsmith is equally adept at whimsical jokes and taking a firm stand against female genital mutilation. She is now branching out into publishing with A Book for Her — the title is a pun on her acclaimed live show, A Bic For Her. Christie and husband Stewart Lee are the undisputed power couple of radical humour.

Victoria Coren Mitchell

Columnist and presenter

There are not many comic writers who can also claim to be high-rolling card players. Observer columnist Coren became the first two-time winner of the European Poker Tour in April 2014, collecting a £400,000 pot — having become the tournament’s first female winner in 2006. Presumably BBC4 pays her slightly less for hosting cerebral cult quiz Only Connect, but the job fits in nicely with her thinking woman image. Coren has a friendly media rivalry with her brother, writer and food critic Giles Coren, and is married to comedian David Mitchell.

Jessica Hynes

Actress

Anyone who has ever dealt with PR companies could only watch Hynes’s pin-point portrayal of Siobhan Sharpe in Olympic satire Twenty Twelve and BBC mockumentary W1A through their fingers, such was its painful accuracy. The star who first broke through alongside Simon Pegg in Spaced is one of our most versatile comic actors, creating each new role with forensic precision. Hynes’s pre-eminent status was underlined when she won a Bafta for Best Female Performance in a Comedy Programme for Siobhan Sharpe this year.

Jack Whitehall

Comedian

Whitehall is pretty much established in the premiere league of stand-up. He has sold out the O2 Arena and had television hits with Bad Education, Fresh Meat and the chat show Backchat, in which he co-starred with his curmudgeonly father Michael. The only blip was the failure of American TV to commission a US version of Bad Education. However, a big screen version of the show was released last month with Whitehall’s hapless teacher Alfie Wickers accompanying his pupils on a riotous trip to Cornwall.

Harry Enfield

Comedian, writer

The impressionist who gave the world Loadsamoney back in the Eighties returned to form in 2014 with his satirical tribute to BBC2 with Paul Whitehouse, Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos. Enfield’s impression of Simon Schama was so acute it would not be a surprise if he starts being invited to host history documentaries. He is coming close to approaching national treasure status and to mark his resurgence he is going out on a national tour this autumn with Whitehouse.

Tracey Ullman

Comedian

Some 30 years after quitting these shores to launch an Emmy award-winning US show, the comedian who blazed a trail for a generation of female stars in the Eighties is poised for a surprise comeback with The Tracey Ullman Show, a new six-part BBC1 series. Returning to her sketch show roots, Ullman will unveil a “multitude of diverse and distinct characters living in, or visiting, the busy global hub that is the UK”.

Matt Berry

Actor

An inescapable presence through his booming voiceovers for brands such as Absolute Radio, Berry created a comedy role worthy of his talents as the irascible Soho luvvie Steven Toast in Channel 4’s Toast of London. The Rose D’Or-winning show elevated Berry to an appearance in the NBC comedy Community. Now he is pursuing his musical ambitions, performing with his prog-rock inspired band The Maypoles at the Royal Albert Hall.

Richard Ayoade

Comedian and screenwriter

Fans of The IT Crowd may long for the return of geeky genius Maurice Moss, but Ayoade’s nerdy persona in the Channel 4 sitcom bears little relation to his burgeoning reputation as a director, actor and screenwriter. Following his directorial debut with the touching coming-of-age drama Submarine, Ayoade tackled Dostoevsky with The Double. Married to Lydia Fox, of the famous acting clan, Ayoade’s ability to move from panel show to film set has made him an in-demand talent.

Sara Pascoe

Comedian

It took years for Sara Pascoe to dismiss the notion that “women weren’t welcome” on the comedy circuit but The Thick of It actress is making up for lost time. A regular on panel shows including Mock The Week, where she laid into Page 3, Pascoe slipped a feminist message into her Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated stage show, a take on famous love stories. The Lewisham comic was praised for her intelligence and off-kilter charm after gaining a South Bank Show award nomination.

Charlie Brooker

Comedian and screenwriter

From humble origins as a computer games reviewer, Brooker has risen to become one of television’s most important figures, as a critic in his pithy Guardian columns, as a writer with his dystopian Black Mirror satires and as a comedic commentator on C4’s 10 O’Clock Live and BBC2’s Weekly Wipe. Always entertaining, invariably provocative, he is a welcome bit of grit in the wheels of the smooth world of showbiz. It will be interesting to watch how venomous his political satire is now though — his sister-in-law Rupa Huq became a Labour MP this year.

Jessica Raine

Actress

Hollywood beckons for the nurse’s daughter who shot to fame in the BBC1 series Call the Midwife. After choosing to hang up her Fifties NHS uniform, Raine impressed as Jane Rochford, Anne Boleyn’s manipulative sister-in-law, in Wolf Hall. The partner of actor Tom Goodman-Hill, Raine is fielding big-screen offers and is the star of a major new BBC Agatha Christie reboot. A Rada graduate, she is emphatically not part of the public school acting elite: “I am not posh. I went to a comprehensive school.”

Michael McIntyre

Comedian

The mainstream funnyman makes millions giggle. Those who criticise him are most probably merely envious of his success, which he only earned after years of struggle when he paid bills with loose change found down the back of the sofa. He makes no pretence of being revolutionary but he is hugely skilled — it takes lots of effort to make stand-up appear this easy. He is embarking on his biggest tour yet, entitled Happy & Glorious, filling more arenas with laughter and pocketing plenty of cash which should make him feel happy and glorious too.

Sharon Horgan

Actress and writer

Magnificent chronicler of the messy ins and out of relationships. Horgan first made her name with the BBC3 sitcom Pulling which was brutally axed despite the plaudits. Others might have been tempted to give up, but not this tough Irish woman. She has continued to make great television and really bounced back this year on C4 with Catastrophe, co-writing and co-starring in the modern, frank, mature love story set in London in which her character finds the funny side of an unwanted pregnancy following a whirlwind casual fling with an American businessman played by Rob Delaney.

Mark Gatiss

Writer and actor

Does any other actor do éminences grise as well as Gatiss? His poisonous Stephen Gardiner in Wolf Hall was only topped by the actor’s embodiment of another sinister political operative, Peter Mandelson, in Channel 4’s Coalition drama. The Sherlock co-writer will play a role in another reboot when he appears as Colonel Theakes in next year’s Dad’s Army movie.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton

Actors and writers

Shearsmith and Pemberton have pushed the envelope ever since their days in macabre sketch group The League of Gentlemen. Their latest BBC2 project, Inside No 9, broke the mould again. Each instalment was a self-contained playlet with a horrific twist. They were able to find chilling laughs in every genre from historic dramas about demonic possession to suburban family gatherings. Their best episode, The 12 Days of Christine, starring Sheridan Smith, focused on someone’s life flashing before them and was funny, frightening and also extremely moving. No one has quite their ability to make you laugh and jump out of your skin simultaneously.

Rob Brydon

Comedian and presenter

The former voice of Toilet Duck commercials has become one of broadcasting’s most ubiquitous stars. His appearance alongside Steve Coogan in The Trip to Italy cemented his status as an artful actor. Unlike Coogan, however, Brydon can also be a mainstream entertainer, hosting amiable quizzes such as Would I Lie to You? If he masters dancing he could be the new Bruce Forsyth. If not there are always more lucrative voiceovers and adverts to keep the wolf from the door.

Nick Helm

Comedian

Ask most comedians who they rate and Nick Helm’s name will pop up. This imposing performer — sometimes bearded, sometimes not, but always sweaty — has been wowing crowds for years with his distinctive brand of immersive stand-up. His Edinburgh Festival sets have gone down in legend. Audience members (or should that be victims?) are hauled onstage to take part in songs and games or just generally to keep Helm company. It sounds scary but everyone who has done it loves it. He has now transferred the magic to television in BBC3’s Heavy Entertainment and is writing his own sitcom.

Miles Jupp

Actor and writer

Some comedians explode onto the scene, some make it by stealth. Jupp is one of the latter. The impeccably well-mannered divinity graduate is a regular on panel games and became familiar to millions as Nigel in the sitcom Rev. Children already know him as Balamory’s Archie the Inventor. He has been known to swear and get angry on-screen, of course, but never as Archie. Is replacing Sandi Toksvig as the host of Radio 4’s The News Quiz.

Miles Jupp Adrian Lourie
Adrian Lourie

Josh Widdicombe

Comedian

Stand-up’s next big thing could be this unimposing Devonian, who has the Michael McIntyre-ish gift of spotting the funny side of everyday behaviour. He made his name as co-host of C4’s topical talk show The Last Leg and has become such a familiar face on panel games it sometimes feels as if he has his own TV channel. Just when you think you can’t see any more of this former journalist he made his own BBC3 sitcom, Josh. It’s a flatshare comedy, but forget comparisons with Men Behaving Badly, this is closer to American classic Seinfeld, and features Widdicombe behaving very funnily.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer

Comedians

A quarter of a century since they exploded onto the comedy scene postmodern surrealists Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer recaptured their early golden years with the BBC2 sitcom House of Fools. The knockabout humour was often daft and old-fashioned and had a cartoonish violent streak, but it was deftly done and introduced them to a whole new audience. They are setting out on a 25th anniversary tour this autumn, which may test their ageing bones to the limit, but will also show younger whippersnappers who they have influenced, such as Matt Lucas and David Walliams, how madcap comedy should really be done.

Luisa Omielan

Comedian

There is nobody on the stand-up circuit like Luisa Omielan. And there are no stand-up comedy audiences like a Luisa Omielan audience. Her breakthrough show What Would Beyonce Do?! had fans dancing in the aisles as Omielan clambered through the stalls. Her 2014 follow-up Am I Right Ladies?! was slightly more restrained as Omielan opened up about her struggles with depression. At one point she pulled down her skirt and stood onstage in her underwear ranting eloquently about the tyranny of body fascism. A clip of her performing this routine went viral, notching up 8 million views in a few days.

Luisa Omielan, Comedian Rebecca Reid
Photographed at LIBRARY private members club St Martin’s Lane by Rebecca Reid

Sarah Millican

Comedian

The South Shields stand-up got into comedy after the break-up of her first marriage and is certainly having the last laugh. Her live shows — she is touring again in 2016 — always sell out and the audience has as many men in it as women, enjoying a giggle at her smutty, pithy portraits of domestic life — she is now married to fellow comic Gary Delaney. Millican is also quietly militant about feminism. She penned a moving article when she was criticised for wearing an unflattering dress at an awards ceremony and is heavily involved in online women’s magazine Standard Issue.

Al Murray

Comedian and aspiring politician

Al Murray’s bid to become MP for Thanet South failed, but his stunned expression when it turned out that Nigel Farage had lost was priceless. Murray’s Pub Landlord character polled only 318 votes, but he did amuse everyone when he announced that his policies included charging 1p a pint for beer and bricking up the Channel Tunnel. In reality Murray is an Oxford-educated history buff, distantly related to the writer William Makepeace Thackeray. His political career might have been shortlived but his comedy career goes from strength to strength. Next year he will be performing at the Royal Albert Hall.

Lord Hall

Director general, BBC

Tony Hall has a crucial 12 months ahead of him, defending the remit and funding model of the BBC. Having already been lumbered with the £650 million annual cost of providing free television licences for over-75s by the Government, the corporation now faces the pruning of its empire in a review to be led by John Whittingdale — a surprise appointment as Culture Secretary and a licence fee critic — which will shape next year’s charter renewal. Hall argues that further cuts will cost jobs in the broader TV industry and compromise classy programming such as Wolf Hall.

Jeremy Darroch

Chief executive, Sky

Fears that rivals with deep pockets would end Britain’s biggest pay-TV firm’s dominance over top-flight football were eased when eased when Sky paid £4.2 billion for five of the seven Premiership packages. Darroch continues to fend off Amazon and Netflix with further advances into broadband, apps and online streaming, boosted by the absorption of Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia in a £5 billion deal, creating Europe’s biggest broadcaster.

Sophie Turner Laing

Endemol Shine Group, chief executive

A mega-merger between Fox’s Shine Group, Endemol and Core Media catapulted Turner Laing, head of the new production giant with hit shows ranging from Masterchef to Broadchurch, into Hollywood Reporter’s most powerful women in global TV list. Poached from Sky where she acquired Game of Thrones and expanded the pay-TV provider’s offering into homegrown programming, the former BBC executive is certain to be on any headhunter’s list for the next director general.

Kim Shillinglaw

Controller, BBC2

A former science and natural history commissioner with a reputation for being refreshingly outspoken, Shillinglaw said she relished the task. After luring Nigella Lawson back to a channel which counts Giles Coren, Brian Cox and Mary Beard among its frontline presenters, Shillinglaw has already got BBC2 firing on all cylinders.

Polly Hill

Drama chief, BBC

With the hit Poldark on her CV just as the position of controller of BBC Drama Commissioning became vacant, the rising executive was a shoo-in for one of the most powerful positions in British broadcasting. Demanding “passion and originality” from her writers, the former EastEnders script editor oversaw Wolf Hall and helped guide The Missing, The Shadow Line and The Village to screens. An avid House of Cards viewer, Hill admits she isn’t a Top Gear viewer.

Jeremy Clarkson

Presenter

Freed from the tyranny of BBC pen-pushers and relieved of the professional strains which he says contributed to his fateful “fracas” with a producer, Top Gear fans are about to witness Clarkson Unbound. Amazon Prime has stepped in to sign him up with James May and Richard Hammond for three series at an estimated cost of about £160 million. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos will only say it was “very, very, very expensive”.

Tim Davie

Chief executive, BBC Worldwide

The shrewd marathon runner at the helm of the BBC’s commercial arm will be hoping that Chris Evans can put in the hard yards in place of Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear, one of the broadcaster’s top exports. Ex-Pepsi man Davie struck a canny deal by selling a stake in BBC America to Breaking Bad owner AMC Networks. Also chairs Comic Relief.

Elisabeth Murdoch

Founder, Shine

A new chapter awaits for Rupert Murdoch’s second eldest daughter, who made a personal profit of £130 million from the sale of Shine, the Primrose Hill-based production powerhouse she built, to 21st Century Fox. Elisabeth departed after Rupert, who took against Matthew Freud, Elisabeth’s ex-husband, merged Shine with Big Brother maker Endemol and Core Media. Will she return to her father’s side in New York or build a new empire independent of the media mogul?

Peter Fincham

Director of television, ITV

ITV’s creative renaissance hit a bump with the decision to end Downton Abbey before viewers tire of the phenomenon. But with dramas including Cilla and the Bafta-winning The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies adding lustre to evergreen entertainment hits I’m a Celebrity and Britain’s Got Talent, Fincham is doing enough to keep the suits happy despite concerns over ITV1’s long-term performance. With millions in the bank from his production days, Fincham’s relaxed bonhomie contrasts with some of TV’s ratings-chasers.

Danny Cohen

Director of television, BBC

Hotly tipped to succeed Tony Hall as the next director-general, the management star launched a battle of wills with the BBC’s naughty schoolboy, Jeremy Clarkson. Caricatured as a liberal, metropolitan elitist, Cohen could not get his nemesis to understand that his behavioural excesses reflected upon the entire BBC. With Clarkson gone, Cohen, who is married to economist Noreena Hertz, has demonstrated that no personality is bigger than the BBC — and in doing so has staked his claim for the top job.

Jay Hunt

Chief creative officer, Channel 4

Squeezed by the big boys, the Channel 4 boss’s challenge is often to get her programmes talked about — a feat certainly achieved by Benefits Street and Gogglebox. The Australian-born and Cambridge-educated Hunt pulled off a coup by luring Jeremy Paxman to present an alternative election night show, which followed a live broadcast of James Graham’s play The Vote from the Donmar. She might be a demanding boss but Hunt is unafraid to take risks.

Charlotte Moore

Controller, BBC1

The boss of the Beeb’s most-watched channel, with a near-£1 billion budget, Moore will have been disappointed that BBC1 emerged from this year’s Baftas with the same number of awards as BBC3, which is to be yanked from TV screens. With Poldark winning Sunday night viewers and Happy Valley offering more gritty drama delights, the channel has more to offer than the populist charms of EastEnders and Strictly.

Kelly Merryman

VP of content partnerships, YouTube

In the scramble for “eyeballs”, perhaps none of the TV channel controllers in this list can command the global audience which is just a click away for the Harvard Business School graduate. The American oversaw streaming platform Netflix’s expansion across the UK and Europe. Last year she was poached by Google to become the lead exec at YouTube, managing its relations with media content companies large and small throughout the world.

Rona Fairhead

Chair, BBC Trust

A trying year for the former Financial Times Group chief executive who resisted demands that she resign from her BBC Trust post over her role as an non-executive director at the scandal-hit HSBC. Fairhead sought to seize the initiative with a bold plan to abolish the Trust altogether, urging that it should be replaced by a new external regulator monitoring the BBC. She has friends in the upper echelons of the Conservative government but the Trust appeared sidelined in a shotgun licence fee deal.

Rona Fairhead: Chair, BBC Trust Rebecca Reid
Rebecca Reid

David Abraham

Chief executive, Channel 4

The boss of Britain’s second biggest state-owned broadcaster followed up a lecture warning that Britain’s unique creative economy is at risk from American TV and tech giants with a bold blueprint for improving diversity on screen. Channel 4 executives will find their bonus payments cut if they fail to meet radical new targets which require women, black, Asian or minority ethnic people and the disabled to be given significant roles across a range of programmes. “It is positive action, not positive discrimination,” he said.

Lord Allen

Chairman, Global Radio

The Labour peer will not have enjoyed the election result but the persistent probing of politicians by James O’Brien, the LBC presenter, now has a nationwide audience since the Global stations expanded their digital footprint. A senior adviser at Goldman Sachs, Allen used to run ITV and has sat on the boards of Virgin Media and Big Brother producer Endemol.

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