Peter Fincham | MediaGuardian 100 2012
Job: ITV director of television
Age: 56
Industry: broadcasting
2011 ranking: 15
"Didn't you edit the Queen once?" Keith Lemon asked Peter Fincham in an Edinburgh TV festival edition of Celebrity Juice. "You'd have been director general if you didn't do that."
Many a true word. Parallel universes aside, Fincham has overseen a creative renaissance at ITV since joining the commercial broadcaster in 2008.
Julian Fellowes's Titanic may have disappointed and the Chiles-Bleakley Daybreak sunk without trace, but the Fred West drama Appropriate Adult swept the board at awards time and Downton Abbey has just returned for a third series.
ITV's Simon Cowell spectaculars, The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, are showing their age but they still dominated last year's most-viewed shows chart, while Benidorm has become ITV's biggest sitcom hit for a decade.
After suffering at the hands of the BBC during the Olympics, when ITV1 sank to its lowest share of the audience in its history, Fincham is banking on a big slate of new drama, including Ronnie Biggs biopic Mrs Biggs, to win it ratings medals.
Multimillionaire Fincham made his name – and his fortune – at independent producer Talkback, maker of I'm Alan Partridge and Da Ali G Show.
He was appointed controller of BBC1 in 2005, commissioning How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and Robin Hood, only to be forced out two years later in the wake of the scandal over a misleadingly-edited trailer for a documentary about the Queen. "I worked hard to become a BBC insider," Fincham said later. "When Queengate kicked off I quite quickly realised I wasn't."
Fincham also plays keyboards in a band featuring Tim Hincks, president of Big Brother producer Endemol Group, called No Expectations. Back to Keith Lemon again. "Why not call it Daybreak?" Ouch.