DG 2020 - 13

The Guardian, at the forefront of DG tracking and tracing, detects a wobble in fearless Sir David Clementi's stride. It hints at anxiety over the shortlist, and a push back for the final interviews from June to September.

It's sticking to idea of four candidates in play - Tim Davie, Charlotte Moore, Will Lewis and A.N. Other, and suggests number 4 is now Doug Gurr from Amazon. The paper thinks the bid to land a second female for the shortlist has failed, thus the emergence of Mr Gurr.

Mr Gurr was born in Leeds; dad taught literary history, specialising in Shakespeare, at the University, and moved to Nairobi in his early years, but returned to Reading University in time for Doug to go to Theale Green School. At Cambridge, Doug studied maths, then went on to pick up a Ph D in computing at Edinburgh.

He taught students at Aarhus University, then three years in an undiscoverable Civil Service role. Then to the big time: six years with McKinsey, then his own company, Blueheath - offering petrol stations, convenience stores and bingo halls next day grocery deliveries via web ordering, at close to cash and carry prices

Booker bought out Blueheath, and Gurr moved on to ASDA/Walmart. The switch to Amazon came in 2011, to the amusingly-named Hardlines division, selling toys and gardening equipment. He became Head of Country for Amazon in China in 2014, then back run the UK in 2016.

He's a total evangelist for Amazon, describing it as "a values and principles" organisation. The business trick to successful new ideas is, he says, to write the press release first, then make the product. In 2018, he told Dominic Raab that Amazon UK had put civil unrest on its risk register, post-Brexit.  In 2019 he joined the board of Deliveroo, after Amazon investment. This year he was in a group of tech industry executives summoned by Dominic Cummings to explain what they would do to help combat Covid-19.

Since his return to the UK, he's moved to contact lenses and dark shirts.

Doug was a non-executive at the Department for Work and Pensions in Iain Duncan-Smith's time. He is Chairman of the British Heart Foundation, and a Trustee of the Landmark Trust, non-executive Director of the Land Registry and was until 2014 Chairman of the Science Museum Group.  He is a former Scottish international triathlete, 12 times Ironman, keen ski mountaineer with over 20 first ascents, and an enthusiastic mountain runner, recently completing the Bob Graham 24hr Round, the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, and the Spine Challenger. He's the co-author of the 2012 classic, Staying Alive Off Piste - available, natch, through Amazon. Beat that, Tim Davie.