With Elan

It looks like we're being prepped for the announcement of Welsh grande fromage Professor Dame Elan Closs Stephens, CBE FRSA FLSW DBE, as the interim chair of the BBC. 

Born in the Welsh-speaking slate quarrying town of Talysarn in 1948, Elan Closs Roberts left Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle for the heady atmosphere of Somerville College, Oxford, where she campaigned to get women admitted to the Dafydd, the Welsh university society, and became its first female president. Her first job was with the Welsh Arts Council, and the career through Welsh culture and academia was on its way, with jobs too many to mention (including leading a review of the Welsh Arts Council).  In 1972 she married Roy Stephens. He was the first secretary of the Tongue Music Society, laying down the rules for bardic singing competitions, and author of a Welsh rhyming dictionary. 

Elan has been in various governance roles at the BBC since 2010.  Non-execs elsewhere have been criticised for staying too long, but that probably doesn't apply to the Welsh. She has one tick in the register of interests; I'm guessing that's her connection as mother-in-law of business journalist Katie Prescott, who last year left the Today programme for The Times.  Daughter Angharad is Associate Professor of Human  Geography at Swansea University.