06/07/2026
It was lovely to hear from Nigel Hadden-Paton as our guest speaker at Speech Day last Thursday.The OM, former Guards Officer, formerGovernor and now businessman owner of ‘Radio H-P’ gave us wisdom, humour and warmth, finishing with a flourish as he gave us an inspirational list of high- achieving OM, remakable in its range and diversity! I quote from his final paragraphs:
‘My final themes are Entrepreneurship and Ambassadorship.
Wherever I go I bump into OM’s – often in the most unlikeliest of places with not necessarily the most mainstream of career paths but all pursuing their passions and doing something they enjoy.
From my old Head of School, Mel Haggard, who heads up The London Waste & Recycling Board.
To My half brother Julian Parsons, who gained only 3 GCSE’s but thanks to the encouragement of Hughie Hodgkinson, learnt how to strip & re-assemble a car engine in 24 hrs here at MA and then transferred those skills to Zimbabwe, where he became one of only a handful of skilled technicians – flown around the country to repair To***co & Maize Harvesters, Mining trucks, water pumps and even the late Mugabe’s fleet of limousines!
To Johnny Goedhuis – possibly the most successful wine broker ever.
To Simon Hearn – another ex soldier who on leaving started Per Adua Recruitment Agency – the best in its class.
To Colin Pink – sound designer extraordinaire, who devised and installed the entire sound system for the Olympic Stadium for the Olypics in 2012. The spark which lit his passion for sound came from his time working behind the scenes in The Barn Theatre.
To Alastair Bruce, - whose passion from his early days here, was Heraldry and knows more about our Royal Family than the Royal Family themselves. The voice of ceremonial on Sky TV and until recentl, historical adviser to Julian Fellowes on the set of Downton Abbey – he was affectionately known as ‘The Oracle’ by the cast & crew!
To an array of Chefs - Harvey Trollope, who has worked alongside Marco P-W and became premier sous chef at The Ritz – now started his own restaurant in London along with Olly Gladwin, owner of five Local & Wild restaurants and Charlie Carron Brown, restaurant manager at Aulis London, who was recently named in the Top 25 Sommeliers in the World.
To Sam Bullard – who runs the world famous Darley Stallion Stud in Newmarket for the Maktoums of Dubai.
To our Thespians - Rupert Evans – one of our top stage & screen actors - and Connie Wookey, leaver in 2009, who won the Lawrence Langner Award for Voice and Speech on Broadway, NYC!
To Carla Tordoff-Gibson - First Class degrees from King’s College London and Harvard University, now a senior researcher of rare diseases at Takeda, a global biopharmaceutical leader. And her brother Charlie, airline pilot.
And other OM girls:
To Charlotte Saville – successful lawyer and pupil barrister
To Annie Bacon; one of the youngest to get a racehorse trainer’s licence.
To Tom Homer, professional rugby player for 13 years with London Irish and Bath, who represented England U20.
James Lees, youngest qualified British Airways Captain ever
Toby Boone & Charlie Davies – Skippers of the largest Private Yachts in the world on salaries which make ones eyes water!
To Charlie Matheson who started and runs Thames Rockets from underneath The Eye and powers Tourists up The Thames at 50 plus knots in 12 seater Ribs!
To our successful service personnel - James Po***ck, who commanded the IG; John Gabb Commander of nuclear submarines; Neil Tomlin, who commanded 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland: to name but a handful who have taken the King’s shilling.
To Simon Tandy – who ran King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa's Investment Office in Bahrain.
To Johnny Paravicini – ex Head of Damer in the late 70s – who is now running my business – Radio H-P a private membership networking platform with over 37k Listeners as we call them.
To Anthony Geffen, who left MA in 1980 and from Oxford University went to the London Film school and then onto BBC collaborating with David Attenborough, winning 50 major Intl awards including multiple BAFTAs and 11 Emmy awards.
There will be no Etonian out there who can boast that!!’
Thank you, Nigel, for reminding us once again of why we should feel so very proud of ourselves….
