Distinguished friends
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia
Riz Ahmed
Sughra Ahmed
Keith Ajegbo
George Alagiah
Claire Alexander
Peter Atkins
Julian Baggini
Richard Beswick
Dinesh Bhugra
Karan Bilimoria
Geoffrey Bindman
Karen Blackett
Nicholas Blake
Ian Blatchford
David Blunkett
Achim Borchardt-Hume
Mihir Bose
Alain de Botton
John Bowers
Des Browne
Rickie Burman
Paul Canoville
Saimo Chahal
Reeta Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Stephen Claypole
Robin Cohen
Linda Colley
David Crystal
Angélica Dass
Prakash Daswani
Navnit Dholakia
Ibrahim Dogus
Lloyd Dorfman
Alf Dubs
John Dyson
Damien Egan
Shreela Flather
Daniel Franklin
Edie Friedman
Manjit Singh Gill
Teresa Graham
Susie Harries
Naomie Harris
James Hathaway
David Hencke
Sophie Herxheimer
Afua Hirsch
Michael Howard
Clive Jacobs
Kevin Jennings
Adrian Johns
Shobu Kapoor
Jackie Kay
Ayub Khan-Din
Francesca Klug
Tony Kushner
Kwasi Kwarteng
Kwame Kwei-Armah
David Kynaston
Brian Lambkin
Mark Lewisohn
Joanna Lumley
Michael Mansfield
Sue McAlpine
Neil Mendoza
David Miles
Abigail Morris
Hugh Muir
Tessa Murdoch
Sandy Nairne
Bushra Nasir
Susheila Nasta
Eithne Nightingale
John O’Farrell
Kenneth Olisa
Kunle Olulode
David Olusoga
Julia Onslow-Cole
John Orna-Ornstein
Herman Ouseley
Ruth Padel
Panikos Panayi
Bhikhu Parekh
Nikesh Patel
David Pearl
Caryl Phillips
Mike Phillips
Trevor Phillips
Sunand Prasad
Aubrey Rose
Michael Rosen
Cathy Ross
Salman Rushdie
Jill Rutter
Philippe Sands
Konrad Schiemann
Richard Scott
Stephen Sedley
Maggie Semple
Saira Shah
Babita Sharma
Nikesh Shukla
Jon Snow
Robert Soning
David Spence
Danny Sriskandarajah
Stelio Stefanou
Dick Taverne
Robert Tombs
Rumi Verjee
Patrick Vernon
Edmund de Waal
Iqbal Wahhab
Yasmin Waljee
Jake Wallis Simons
David Warren
Iain Watson
Henning Wehn
Janet Whitaker
Gary Younge
Benjamin Zephaniah
Stephen Claypole
Stephen Claypole is Chairman of DMA-Media Ltd, the London-based content creation and editorial outsourcing company. He is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.
He is a former Chairman and now a Trustee Director of Ockenden International.
In his ten years at DMA-Media Ltd, he has handled assignments in many different parts of the world, usually in factual programming but sometimes in public affairs. He worked on the reconstruction of broadcasting in Kosova and Iraq after the recent wars there. In Baghdad he helped to get emergency radio and TV on-air within days of the American invasion, a service known as the Iraqi Media Network (now Al-Iraqiya).
In the last three years Stephen has advised the Abu Dhabi government on the start-up of a media enterprise zone called twofour54 and helped to set up a training academy for Arab journalists.
Before joining DMA-Media Ltd, Stephen was the founding Managing Director of APTN, now the world’s biggest and most profitable news-gathering agency. He was also a co-partner with Mark McCormack of IMG in the hugely successful launch of Sports News Television (SNTV).
Stephen went to APTN from Reuters, where he was responsible for turning the old Visnews news-gathering co-operative into Reuters Television. During that period he was one of the pioneers of satellite news gathering (SNG) and a project leader in the start-up of SKY NEWS, the world’s second news channel and the first in the UK.
During a 12-year period at the BBC, in the early part of Stephen’s broadcasting career, he was a reporter and special correspondent; Editor, News and Current Affairs, Northern Ireland; News Editor, Television; and, finally Editor, BBC World Service.
His early experiences were in newspaper journalism. He spent two years on an exchange programme at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in Massachusetts, was a Fleet Street correspondent and news executive and spent three years as the Foreign Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.