Benighted

The Daily Mail notes that Mark Thompson, former BBC DG, hasn't featured in an Honours list since his departure for New York - there's been something for most recent DGs except Alasdair Milne.

The independent members of the Arts and Media Honours Committee are Lord Fellowes of West Stafford, creator of Dowton Abbey for ITV (last seen on the BBC in a 2006 panel game Never Mind The Full Stops, which lasted just one series of five shows); Dame Liz Forgan, who left the BBC in 1996 after a fight with John Birt about moving radio news and current affairs to Television Centre (Mark was then running BBC2);  Julia Peyton Jones, Director of the Serpentine Gallery; Luke Rittner - Chief Executive, Royal Academy of Dance; and Sir Peter Stothard - Editor, The Times Literary Supplement, and Editor of Cherwell at Oxford University when Lord (Tony) Hall was editing Isis.

Ex-officio (until recently) members included Jonathan Stephens, formerly Permanent Secretary at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who must have been part of Jeremy Hunt's team concluding the done-in-a-weekend licence fee settlement with Mark Thompson.