LORD MARMADUKE HUSSEYLord Marmaduke Hussey, known to many as ‘Duke’ and most famous for being the longest serving chairman in the BBC’s history, died aged 83 on 27 December, 2006.Appointed in 1986 by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Lord Hussey led the corporation for almost a decade during some of its most turbulent years.However, his management style and connections with the Tory party ultimately provoked wide-scale criticism and caused a series of damaging internal divisions which left the corporation lacking in both confidence and morale.A large and bluff man who had difficulty walking after losing a leg in the Second World War, he also fulfilled a series of management roles at Associated and Times newspapers, where he earned a reputation for being a tough negotiator.He was made a life-peer as Baron Hussey of North Bradley in 1996.Marmaduke James Hussey was born on 29 August, 1923, in Surrey, London.His father, Eric Hussey, was an Olympic hurdler and, by the time the young Hussey was six, he had spent four years of his life in Uganda.Educated at Rugby and Trinity School, Oxford, he excelled in his studies but the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 interrupted them and instead saw him posted to Italy, where he was taken prisoner by Germans in the Battle of Anzio.Badly wounded by machine-gun fire, he was forced to have his right leg amputated and, back home in England, spent six months in an orthopaedic hospital recovering from a bullet which was lodged in his spine.He finally graduated from Oxford in 1949, before going on to join Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail as a management trainee. Here, he worked his way through the Northcliffe House commercial departments until finally becoming a director in 1964, and, incredibly, managing director just three years after that.In 1971 he was recruited by Lord Thomson of Fleet, owner of the then-floundering Times Newspapers, to take over as chief executive. It was to be a controversial and ultimately unsuccessful reign for Hussey, whose radical shock tactics led to strikes over pay and, in the end, the collapse of the Thomson Organisation.As Rupert Murdoch won a controversial bidding process to buy out the newspapers, most of the Thomson executives lost their jobs. Lord Hussey remained, however, as a full-time consultant until, in 1986, following the death of Stuart Young, Margaret Thatcher invited him to “sort out” the BBC.At the time, the broadcasting corporation was in a sea of troubles, particularly regarding their coverage of controversial issues such as the Falklands conflict and Northern Ireland. The license fee, too, was causing some dispute. Lord Hussey, as the new chairman of the Board of Governors, immediately fired the Director-General and oversaw the appointment of the hard-headed John Birt as deputy.However, despite his initial success in the role, his final years were marred by an increasingly bitter rift with Mr Birt and heavy criticism over his management style, especially after ‘Panorama’s’ highly controversial interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1995.In 1996 he stepped down as chairman of the BBC, but remained chairman of the Royal Marsden Hospital and the National Advisory Council on the employment of disabled people. He died on 27 December, 2006, at the age of 83.“I have always enjoyed being thought a fool,” he himself once wrote. “...It gives you an immediate advantage over those around you.”His appointment to the BBC caused something of a storm at the time and even he was reportedly astonished to have been offered the job, enduring two sleepless nights before eventually accepting.Although many found the ‘Duke’ to resemble Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit of the Year, he was also a courageous, dedicated and friendly man who spent much of his later life in severe physical pain as a result of his war wounds but refused to be confined to a wheelchair.
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