The People OMs of the Year OM of the Year 2007
OM of the Year 2007
OM of the Year 2007
“You’ve heard about the Oscars, said John Davies, introducing last year’s four OM of the Year winners in the auditorium of the School’s magnificent new concert hall on November 2nd, ” but today you are going to see presented four ‘Annas’!”
Four Annas – four trophies, splendid etched glass plinths with winners’ names inscribed – less than a foot high designed in the year 2000 by Anna Williams a sixth form Millfield student, have now been presented annually each year to about two dozen international sportsmen and women, Olympic winners and personalities, media personalities, West End directors, international leaders, pioneering doctors and magnificent benefactors.
Millfield is the only school in the country to award its most famous former pupils annually and the names are selected after much deliberation by the Committee of the Old Millfield Society depending on the successes of that year tracked through the media and other records. With a database of more than 14,000 names to choose from, Professor Bob Clark, the Society’s chairman, said: “You have to be pretty famous to get it.”
This year’s winners are no exception to fame. In the order in which they received the award they were: Kate Griggs, the dyslexia campaigner; Cleve West former sportsman and now a gardening celebrity; Welsh rugby legend Gareth Edwards, and Jeremy Thomas, the internationally renowned film producer.
All have won awards before – but none, each would readily admit, as important as the Old Millfiedian ‘Anna’ the OMA.
Jeremy Thomas’s most celebrated film – The Last Emperor – indeed won nine Oscars at the 1987 Academy Awards including Best Picture. He also won the photography prize at Edgarley Hall in 1963 – until now ‘undoubtedly his finest hour’ said John Davies. Kate Griggs won this year’s Campaigner of the Year Award for her work uniting all the leading dyslexia charities into the campaigning organisation Xtraordinary people. Cleve West won a gold medal at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show.
As well as winning 53 caps, seven national titles including three Grand Slams for Wales, Gareth Edwards CBE had that ‘try’ for the Barbarians against the All Blacks in 1973 at Cardiff Arms Park. And that try, shown on film on the stage of the auditorium, drew gasps from the audience of 200 friends of the winners, staff, former staff, governors and students of Millfield. Last year similar gasps were drawn at the presentation of Simon Jones’s 10 out of the 18 wickets in the victorious 2005 Ashes series . “I must have seen that try 200 times” said John Davies, and I’m always worried that Gareth’s going to drop the ball in the final dive for the line!” In a poll of international rugby players in 2003 by Rugby World Magazine Gareth was voted the most outstanding rugby player of all time. He is also one of the country’s greatest fishermen . In 1990 he caught a 45lb pike which was the heaviest fish ever caught in Britain. But even that pike pales in comparison to the OMA.!
As Headmaster Peter Johnson said drawing the ceremony to a close, they have all mentioned how marvellous Millfield was and so eloquently. “They were much better than Amy Winehouse was at the European Awards last night when she said nothing at all and then sang a song!”
Kate Griggs spoke movingly about her brother OM Tom who was told that because of his dyslexia he would get nowhere in life. “Millfield was a brilliant school for supporting children who were not going to get on anywhere else. My brother Tom is probably one of the best examples of that. He was Chief Executive of Virgin Mobile and last week he was brought out of retirement to be Chief Executive of Orange.”
Cleve West , who was a celebrated athlete long-jumping for Great Britain said: “I can’t tell you how much I appreciated the all-round education, because later injury forced me out of athletics in my mid-20s. Pinning all your hopes on one goal is necessary to achieve it but things don’t always work out for the best. So that’s life, and I had to dig deep to find something else – pardon the gardening pun!”
Gareth Edwards, who came from a Welsh mining background, said: “Millfield gave me an opportunity that I really never foresaw years before. It was certainly some of the happiest days of my life. It certainly was a huge contributory factor for the rest of my life. It put me on a pathway that I never fully appreciated was around the corner.”
And Jeremy Thomas, who started by saying that his achievements at Millfield were negligible: “my main sport in school was avoiding sport!” went on to say: “I think it was more of an experiment coming to Millfield and today you can see that that experiment has been concluded and is rounded off. It’s obviously one of the most outstanding places to be educated in in the world and you feel that all that experiment was worthwhile.”
The Headmaster, as always, summed it all up admirably from his own personal experience when he said: “Today reminds me why it has been such a joy to be the Headmaster of this school because of the people you have a chance to meet and because of the opportunities that they give me in a sense of inspiring me in what I do. I have that inspiration every day from the pupils but also when I meet OMs, to think of the people who have been through this school in only 72 years and what it’s achieved in that time it’s fantastic.”
In the final tribute of the day, Bob Clark thanked Peter Johnson for his outstanding contribution to developing the celebration of OMs over the last eight years. Peter will no longer be Headmaster at the ninth annual OM Award presentation. Peter of all people should be collecting his Anna. But unlike Gareth Edwards’gigantic pike, this well deserved OMA has got away. This is because his old school, unlike Millfield, does not celebrate its famous former pupils in this great manner. What a pity!