He does more than keep the books…

THE qualifications required to become a competent company secretary are precisely laid down in the textbooks. They do not include playing rugby, squash or sailing your own 14-foot International dinghy. No mention is made of studying engineering, stage managing musicals or digging up mines in the desert.

But this is the kind of experience that provides the background for 41-year-old JACK BARHAM to work with efficiency and skill as the secretary to Associated Television. Being a qualified chartered accountant can also come in useful, by the way.

In his job Mr Barham has to combine the precision of an expert on company practice with the enthusiasm of an adventurer in a new medium of entertainment.

Jack Barham’s functions range from recording the minutes of the board meetings to solving personal problems of members of the staff.

There are many times when he has to have both the skill of the chess player and the optimistic anticipation of the man with only one number to go for a fullhouse at Bingo.

One important factor that makes him well-liked throughout the company is that he always is very approachable.

Born at Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of a local solicitor, Jackson Barham was studying engineering when the war came. He left London University for the Army to serve in the Royal Engineers.

In North Africa he found himself engaged in the delicate task of avoiding being blown up by mines and preventing the same thing happening to the advance troops of the First Army.

His field company cleaned-up vast stretches of desert territory prior to the push into Tunis, but one little stretch almost cleaned up Jack Barham.

A mine that exploded at the wrong time sent him back to Blighty on a stretcher.

When the war ended Mr Barham decided he would become an accountant. The fact that the firm to whom he was articled did a good deal of work in show business was probably the first signpost along the road that led him into television.

Qualified as an accountant, he joined the Stoll Theatre Group, but in order to gain practical experience he worked at first as a stage-manager.

Some time later he was appointed Personal Assistant to Mr Prince Littler who was to become the chairman of ATV.

Jack Barham came into ATV in January 1956.

At that time there were less than 100 ATV shareholders. Now there are more than 15,000, and a host of subsidiary companies scattered throughout the world which Mr Barham has helped to form.

With so much business to attend to he has little chance these days of taking part in the sports at which he showed so much promise in his younger days. Rugby and athletics are out, although he plays regularly squash and occasionally gets a chance of sailing.

But it’s pottering about the garden at his home in Purley that takes up most of his leisure time. He has a 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son, and a wife named Nora, who no doubt sometimes speculates on how much more ordered family life would have been if her loving husband had gone back to civil engineering after the war.