Mrs Morgan

Nicky Morgan, 46 (Surbiton High School and BA Law, St Hugh's Oxford) is the new Culture Secretary.

In June last year, she revealed a personal boycott of small BBC studios, in London and around the UK, where politicians sit for 'down-the-line' interviews, because of poor lighting. Instead, she'd decided to respond to requests for interviews by asking for crews and reporters to visit her.

“Sky’s a bit better but BBC Millbank [in Westminster] — you sit there in a kind of small cupboard with a camera pointing straight at you. It is deeply unflattering in how you look and . . . I just get a whole load of social abuse afterwards about how ugly I am.”

She was on the Public Accounts Committee in 2014, when MPs led by Margaret Hodge piled into the BBC over the failed Digital Media Initiative.

In 2016, Nicky was replaced on Have I Got News For You by a leather handbag. She'd pulled out of a long-standing booking the show at short notice claiming 'unforeseen circumstances'. It came as she criticised Theresa May for wearing £995 leather trousers in a photo-shoot; ""I don't think I've ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress."

In March 2017 she responded to Tory MP Julian Knight's complaint that the BBC's Brexit coverage was "pessimistic and skewed" by tweeting it was "another attempt by leading Brexiteers to silence those whose coverage and questions they don't like #chilling". She later signed a letter organised by Labour MP Pat McFadden urging the BBC "not to succumb to pressure to skew" coverage.

In September 2018, the Today Programme asked Mrs Morgan if she would serve in a Johnson administration:  "I think I'm very unlikely to be asked but the answer is no. I would not serve in a Boris Johnson cabinet."