Nigel Rees

Euphemism in the workplace does not end with job descriptions. It reaches a pusillanimous peak at the other end of the work process - in dismissal.

I was broadcast-struck from an early age; I had saved up for a tape recorder and started making programmes.

I was absolutely a non-starter at games. My report for rugby said, 'Nigel's chief contribution is his presence on the field.' I used to pray for rain and sometimes it did rain - and we played anyway.

Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the lives of almost anyone else who ever attended the school.

In Sierra Leone last year there was just the two of us hanging out of a helicopter and, when we were in Bosnia, I drove an armoured vehicle, thousands of miles.

I would've done anything to work with Satyajit Ray.