It was one of the most highly anticipated, and most speculated about, appointments in Britain this year, but when Rona Fairhead was revealed as the "preferred candidate" to become chair of the BBC Trust, the first reaction of many in the corridors of White City and Broadcasting House was "Rona who?"
For most of her career, Fairhead, 53, who was until recently chief executive of the Financial Times Group, has played sidekick to her mentor Dame Marjorie Scardino, who stood down as boss of the FT's parent company Pearson in 2012 after 16 years.
Friends describe Fairhead as Scardino's "devoted partner in crime", happy to plough on in the background as Pearson's finance director and then as boss of the division controlling the FT and a 50% stake in the Economist. Scardino, meanwhile, had the front-of-house role charming the City and the media.
Scardino has long moved in the media world – married to a journalist and friends with newspaper editors – and has perfected funny, but cutting, one liners to deflect unwanted questions. Fairhead has given just two national newspapers interviews throughout her 30-year career.
But her time below-the-radar ended on Sunday when she was named the government's preferred candidate for chairman of the BBC's governing body the BBC Trust, replacing Lord Patten who stepped down due to ill health in May.
Leading the BBC – a job that mixes business with politics like no other – requires unimpeachable credentials, so Fairhead's candidature put her immediately under scrutiny. It was noted that her husband, Tom, a private equity boss, had served as a Tory councillor for 16 years and that the couple are "friendly" with George and Frances Osborne.
The family, who spend weekdays in a multi-million pound house in Notting Hill, also rent a "modest cottage" in the grounds of Highclere Castle, home to ITV's Downton Abbey.
Fairhead is "great mates" with Lady Carnarvon, who owns and runs Highclere on the Hampshire-Berkshire border. Neighbouring cottages are rented out by former BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders (who says the Fairheads are lovely neighbours) and former Proms boss Nicholas Kenyon.
Those who know her say Fairhead has a very thick skin but that she has been rattled by some of the coverage her likely appointment has generated. The Sunday Telegraph chose to headline its story "Mother of three poised to lead the BBC" while the Daily Mail asserted that she was nicknamed "Rona Airhead" by male journalists at the FT.
In the statement announcing her candidacy, Fairhead said she was "under no illusions about the significance and enormity" of taking on the job, but friends say she has been hugely frustrated at the focus on her gender rather than her pedigree.
Four former FT editors said they had never heard of anyone using the "airhead" term, and speculated whether rival journalists had simply invented it.
A former close colleague at Pearson said Fairhead consulted dozens of people and had long and intense discussions with her three children, before deciding to take on the job which many others, including former London 2012 Olympics supremo Lord Coe, turned down.
"She's not going into this without her eyes being very open," he said. "She's very careful and thoughtful, not impetuous and won't have made this decision quickly."
John Makinson, chairman of Penguin Random House and the National Theatre and a long-time colleague of hers at Pearson, said: "I'm sure she has thought about the profile issue and of course that's a question that people will ask.
"But let's not forget that the position only became high profile under Chris Patten, because he himself had a profile and because of the events that conspired against him during his leadership. It didn't occupy so many column inches when his predecessor Michael Lyons chaired the trust and maybe it will settle again now."
But there is little chance of Fairhead quietly disappearing into the background any time soon as the BBC is still grappling with the fallout from the Jimmy Saville scandal and also preparing for an intense political battle over the license fee and renewal of the BBC charter after the 2015 election.
Fairhead's first big test will come on Tuesday when she appears before MPs on the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, who have promised to scrutinise her political connections and business career, which includes serving on the board of HSBC and Pepsi. The committee must approve her appointment before she can take up the £110,000 a year three-to four-day-a-week job.
Given the furore over BBC executive payoffs – which saw former director general George Entwistle handed £450,000 when he was forced to resign after just 54 days in the job – Fairhead can expect to be grilled on the £1m cheque she collected when she quit Pearson after failing to succeed Scardino into the top job. The job went instead to internal rival John Fallon, who some saw as less experienced than Fairhead, who was battling breast cancer at the time of succession.
Philip Davies, a Tory member of the committee, has also warned her to face tough questions about her oversight at HSBC, where she sits on the bank's risk committee. In 2012 the bank was fined £1.2bn for breaching US money laundering laws and was described as the "place to launder money" for Mexican drug gangs.
MPs will also focus on her gender, as she is set to become the first woman to chair the BBC Trust, and not all of them will applaud the Whitehall-led selection committee for bringing more diversity to the top of the Beeb.
Tory MP Conor Burns, for instance, has said he enormously regretted that "the government seems determined to appoint a woman simply because it's a woman, rather than go out and find the best person."
Sir Christopher Bland, who was chairman of Trust forerunner the BBC board of governors from 1996-2001, said his advice to Fairhead was to "cancel her subscription to any cuttings agency and grow a second skin". "She is going to be under a very bright spotlight for the next couple of years, and is going to have to get used to getting blamed for doing things wrong that you're not responsible for."
Bland said that Patten, who was previously governor of Hong Kong, had said overseeing the handover of the island back to China in 1997 was "nothing" compared to the pressure of the BBC.
He said: "The blame culture thrives no more fruitfully than in select committees, they want someone to hammer – and that person is going to be you. Those people are not seekers of the truth they are seekers of a sound bites in the Daily Mail or the Evening Standard."
While she may now spend weekends ambling around the manicured lawns at Highclere, Fairhead was not born into high society. She is the daughter of a maths teacher and an atomic physicist from Edinburgh via Cumbria.
Lorna Tilbian, executive director and head of media at stockbroker Numis who has known Fairhead for "yonks", said: "There's real northern grit there, which is unusual in the industry. She is definitely not out of 'media central casting'."
Tilbian dismisses suggestions that Fairhead, who has been on Twitter since 2011 but has yet to tweet, is unknown to broadcasting, and said she is a fixture of the media social circuit where she is known for her "really cheeky, wicked sense of humour".
Tilbian said: "She is really capable, I've seen her in action … she has the charm to persuade people to do things they don't want to do," Tilbian said. "If you have three children you learn a thing or two about sticks and carrots."
Fairhead has been obviously clever from a young age, becoming head girl at fee-paying Yarm School in Stockton-on-Tees, before collecting a double-first from St Catherine's College, Cambridge, where she also coxed in rowing eights and perfected a mean backhand in squash.
From there she joined consultants Bain, before stints at Bombardier – where she developed a love of flying and gained a pilot's licence – and ICI, along with more than a decade at Pearson.
Alongside flying, she lists her hobbies in Debrett's as skiing and scuba diving. But friends say if you ask her about her weekend plans, her children will be at the forefront.
"I have to be very focused since my priorities are my job and my family," she said in her first newspaper interview in 1998, and she believes women having children and successful careers is "an important message for people to receive, since there has been a feeling recently you can't have both".
It doesn't sound like her children are given much the chance to slack off. "My 17-year-old said to me, 'Why should I bother? Why should I go to university?'," she told a university conference last year. "And I said: 'You're right. It's just a building. There's nothing much going on in there – it just has the future in it.'"
While she is undoubtedly clever and sufficiently experienced in the City and Whitehall – having been approached by close friend Lord Browne to serve on the board of the cabinet office – some still question her lack of experience in broadcasting.
But a former colleague at the FT insisted she would cope: "People forget what the other B and C in BBC stand for", he said. "Rona is very 'British' and she has run 'corporations'. And there are a huge number of people at the BBC that can look after the 'broadcasting'."
Rona Fairhead
Born 28 August 1961, Cumbria.
Education Double first in law from St Catharine's College, Cambridge. MBA at Harvard.
Career Joined management consultants Bain & Co straight from Cambridge in 1983. She moved on to Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier, where she fell in love with planes and gained a pilot's licence. She spent a decade at chemicals group ICI before joining Pearson, where she served as finance director and CEO of FT Group before leaving the company in 2012.
High point Overseeing the successful sale of Pearson's stake in financial data company IDC for £1.3bn in 2010.
Low point Left Pearson after failing to succeed Dame Marjorie Scardino as chief executive.
What she says "I am under no illusions about the significance and the enormity [sic] of the job but I am excited to have the chance to lead the BBC through the coming years."
What they say "There's real northern grit there, which is unusual in the industry. She is definitely not out of 'media central casting'."
