The People OMs of the Year OM of the Year 2006
OM of the Year 2006
OM of the Year 2006
It could have been called The Triumph of the Mavericks. And it was performed in the Jack Meyer Theatre for 60 minutes one time only, with no rehearsals, on Friday 10 November 2006. The Director was Bob Clark, Chairman of the Old Millfieldian Society, and the producer/presenter/narrator – the indefatigable John Davies, Society Secretary.
It was pure theatre from start to a romantic finish – the slickest of the OM of the Year presentations in the seven year run of these one-day spectaculars, unknown in any other school in the country, which result from the annual contributions to the nation of more than 14,000 OMs being sifted, chewed over, weighed, discussed and analysed.
In this bumper year of 2005-2006 twelve candidates were produced, of whom eventually after much heart-searching five glitterati were chosen for the award, the largest group of winners selected by the Society. They are household names. It is almost inconceivable to think of any other school in the country which could find in one year’s achievements, a cast of such talent, achievement and diversity from its alumni…
The show had lesser but significant. First the main auditorium of the splendid theatre was packed not only with the friends and the family of the winners the good and the great from the Society, the Senior and Prep Schools including the Head Boy and the Head Girl, the former houseparents and tutors of the chosen mighty but also for the first time with rows of sixth form students studying art, drama, economics and business studies, reflecting the fields in which the actor stars had triumphed. They laughed, cheered and clapped at the jokes. When one contained the f-word, the decibels of their applause shook the rafters.
Then the researcher, the school archivist, no longer Barry Hobson, who was among the audience, but now Dick Shilton took to the stage. He had beavered through the winners’ school reports much to the embarrassment of the two on stage who out of the five had managed to come in person to receive their glass trophies. One was described as ‘quietly determined’ another commended for his ‘pleasing efforts’, a third as ‘clearly individualistic and knows what he wants from life’ and a fourth ‘scholarly, sensitive and well-informed’. Dirty linen is always threatened on these occasions but has never yet been dragged up.
The back-stage star was Malcolm Smele, who had placed head and shoulders school photos of the stars on a large screen making one look, as he himself admitted, like a “young psycho in an Aran sweater” and produced television footage of their triumphs, interviews with them in their studios showing their work against a sonic backdrop of nostalgic pop songs.
Deus ex Machina or Greek Chorus, brought on at the end as he always is to try and explain the moral of the show, was the Headmaster. He had two words for it “inspiration” and “variety”. He said: “To see these awesome five people, and the variety of things they have done is fantastic and inspiring.” Again he said, as he has said before, that he has the best job in the country. And again he tried to define what it is that makes the “Millfield Mix” both vibrant and exciting.
And there is a clue which is in the title I have given to this year’s performance. Producer John Davies inspired it. Three out of the five stars, he said, had been described in newspapers and magazines as “mavericks”. “Now,” he added, the dictionary has got two definitions for maverick: one is an ‘unbranded range animal’ and the other is ‘an independent and non-conformist individual.’”
First Maverick: Simon Jones, tempestuous accident-prone star of the cricket pitch. The backdrop footage showed in quick succession at least 10 of the 18 wickets he took (for an average of 21 runs a piece) in the famous 2005 Ashes victory which thrilled the audience. There was a slight sadness that he could not be in Street that day but bitterly regreted that injury had prevented him from performing that morning in Australia where a mere Prime Minister’s XI had just thrashed Britain’s Test squad.
Second Maverick: Marc Quinn – the famous sculptor – whose piercing white sculpture of the disabled Alison Lapper is on prominent display on a plinth near the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, whose Kate Moss is in yoga position with ankles and arms wrapped around her ears and whose exhibition with excrement and blood was the highlight of the Atkinson Gallery last year. At Millfield he first learned to experiment, he said, in conceptual art. “It was a place where everyone could flourish. It was not a sausage machine.”
Third Maverick: Mark Foster, for medals and longevity, the most successful British swimmer of all time, with at least 25 medals to his credit, and one of the most famous after Duncan Goodhew, Chairman of Millfield School Foundation, who was in the audience to watch Mark Foster receive his award in absentia from Bob Clark. Mark said simply: “I came to Millfield on a swimming scholarship from 13 to 16. If I hadn’t come here I would not have done so well.”
Fourth Maverick: Dominic Dromgoole, the new Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre. I saw him scribble a few notes before he stood up in his open-necked shirt. Otherwise he had not prepared a speech. His wit and sense of timing would have been awe-inspiring if it had not been so funny. He held the stage for less than five minutes trying to fathom out the irony of now being celebrated by a school which spent so much time trying to expel both him and his brother (also in the audience) 20 years ago. He told a few funny stories, including one about his Classics teacher, and then he described two disciplinarians who “used to scream round Street in a sort of car and we used to call them Starsky and Hutch” but they were the exception rather than the rule. For the rest of the school there was the most fantastic spirit of allowing you to be yourself, develop yourself, grow yourself, change yourself, make your own choices in whichever way you wanted to go.”
Before Dominic spoke he had the perfect foil: Vivienne Cox, Executive Vice President of BP, in charge of gas, power, renewables and many other alternative energy sources, and the latest winner of the Veuve Cliquot Business Woman of the Year Award. Calm, unflappable and normal, so organised that she delegates where she can and never, she says, has to do anything. We were in the presence of one of the most powerful business women in the country, responsible for 8000 staff, and yet she never takes work home and loves making jam and cakes on her Aga in the kitchen. So normal that one wondered where was the non-conformity. She spoke so shortly, eloquently and movingly of what Millfield meant to her – giving her that spirit that you can do things. At the end, Erik, her long-time stay-at-home partner who looks after the children, said in an aside (off stage) that he was finally going to propose to her. Then I realised that this woman who had risen so effortlessly to the top in a man’s world was probably the biggest Maverick of them all.