When Rona Fairhead resigned as chief executive of the Financial Times two years ago, after she was beaten by a younger man to the top job at its parent company, Pearson, there was a brief fuss in the business press about her £1m pay-off. Nobody but a few shareholders and City wheeler-dealers took any notice. They will now. Fairhead celebrated her 53rd birthday on Thursday in the knowledge that she was about to be plucked from high-flying obscurity to the cruel spotlight of public service as chairwoman of the BBC Trust.
Since Lord Patten retired hurt from this post in May, after taking a well-deserved battering for his inept handling of the BBC’s sex-abuse crises, the air around Broadcasting House has been thick with the