Sir Peter Bazalgette (62-71) Peter Bazalgette was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting. Having begun his career at the BBC in the late 1970s, where he created BBC2’s Food and Drink Programme , Sir Peter went on to establish his own production company, Bazal, which created many popular television programmes, including Ready Steady Cook , Ground Force and Changing Rooms . Between 1998 and 2007 he worked at production company Endemol, first as Creative Director and later as Chairman of Endemol UK, as well as Chief Creative Officer of Endemol Group. It was during this time that he was responsible for bringing Big Brother to the UK. Since 2009 Sir Peter has served as Chairman of Sony Music Television and Sony Pictures TV. He is a Fellow of BAFTA and the Royal Television Society, a non-executive director of both YouGov and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, and he has also written several books on the topics of cuisine, health and the broadcasting industry. In November 2011 he published a biography of food critic Egon Ronay, who died in 2010. The book, Egon Ronay: A Memoir of the Man who Taught Britain how to Eat , was published by a new company of Sir Peter’s, Newbaz Ltd.
Fl Lt Jonathan Tapper (76-83) In July 2011 an
independent inquiry, led by retired judge Lord Philip and set up by the then Secretary of Defence, Dr Liam Fox, absolved Fl Lt Jonathan Tapper and Fl Lt Richard Cook of blame for the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter which killed all 29 on board,
thereby setting aside the decision of the initial inquiry. Subsequently, Dr Fox made an apology in Parliament and wrote to the families of Fl Lts Tapper and Cook. Seventeen years after the accident, Dr Fox told MPs that the original conclusion by two RAF air marshals that Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook, the pilots of the Chinook, were ‘negligent to a gross degree’ was no longer sustainable and had to be set aside. Dr Fox told the Commons that the original inquiry had been given incorrect legal advice because such a finding of negligence could only have been made if there was ‘absolutely no doubt whatsoever’. Other ‘competent’ people did have doubts at the time, he added. As more evidence emerged about computer and mechanical problems, RAF pilots, senior MPs, aviation experts, engineers and lawyers raised questions about the cause of the crash on 2 June 1994 in which all on board were killed, including 25 senior security and intelligence officers based in Northern Ireland. Lord Philip was appointed to lead a review of the case which concluded that ‘since 1995 [the MoD] have rebuffed all public and private representations that the [original] finding should be reconsidered... We find it regrettable that the department should have taken such an intransigent stance on the basis of an inadequate understanding of the RAF’s own regulations in a matter which involved the reputation of men who died on active service’. Describing the deaths of those killed in the crash as a ‘huge blow to the security of this country’ as well as a tragedy for their families, Dr Fox said he hoped the Lord Philip review ‘will bring an end to this sad chapter by removing this stain on the reputations of the two pilots’. He also wrote to their families apologising for the distress the findings of negligence had caused them.
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