The judges

So far, we only have names for two of the three charged with a second go at selecting a new candidate to chair Ofcom. 

Michael Prescott was a hack - he took a post-graduate course in journalism at Cardiff, after PPE at St Catherine's, Oxford, before short jobs with the Mirror (alongside Alastair Campbell) and the BBC.  He was at the Sunday Times on the politics beat for 10 years, whilst also finding time to be a side-kick to Michael Parkinson on Radio 2. He then joined Weber Shandwick PR, spent time as Corporate Affairs Director at BT. From 2015 to 2017 he was an  External Director of the Cabinet Office’s Government Communications Service, 2015 – 17  (Matthew Hancock and Ben Gummer were Ministers). In February 2017, he joined Hanover Communications as Managing Director Corporate and Political Strategy.  He is currently a member of the Advisory Council to the Government's Radioactive Waste Management operation - presumably on the PR side rather than absolute science; and a Board Member of Cabinet Office diversity panel “Leaders as Change Agents”. 

The lead Civil Servant on the panel also has Cabinet Office pedigree, spookily overlapping with Michael Prescott: Sue Gray, once described "the most powerful civil servant you've never heard of". She had twenty years experience there, rising to head of the Propriety and Ethics Team. After a spell in Northern Ireland (she is married to a country and western singer originally from Portaferry in County Down, called Bill Conlon, and in the 80s ran the Cove Bar outside Newry, County Down) she returned to London to work alongside Michael Gove at Levelling Up.