Mark Thompson: A safe pair of hands with his finger firmly on the digital pulse

Mark Thompson is described by friends as paradoxically a "safe pair of hands" and a "risk taker".

Mark Thompson is described by friends as paradoxically a "safe pair of hands" and a "risk taker".

Despite repeated public avowals that he was not interested in the post, Mr Thompson has long harboured ambitions to become director general of the BBC.

He applied for the job when it fell vacant in 1999, but lost out to Greg Dyke, who was forced to resign in January following the damning criticisms of the BBC in the Hutton report.

According to friends, his wife was reluctant for him to take the job of director general, which commands a lower salary than the deal he was offered at Channel 4, even though it is a post with a much higher public profile.

It became increasingly clear that he was seriously considering the once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity when he stalled over signing a golden handcuffs deal offered to him by Channel 4's new chairman Luke Johnson.

When he took up the mantle of chairman on Monday, Michael Grade said the process of appointing a successor to Mr Dyke would move ahead "as swiftly as practical".

The son of an accountant, Mr Thompson was brought up in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire and educated by Jesuits at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. After reading English at Merton College Oxford he joined the BBC as a graduate trainee in 1979. He rose rapidly through the ranks of news and current affairs becoming the editor of Newsnight and then Panorama.

In 1990, he was appointed head of features and two years later head of factual programmes, before being appointed controller of BBC2 in 1996, and director of television in 2000.

Described by Peter Bazalgette, the chairman of the Big Brother creator Endemol, as "a safe pair of hands and a risk taker", the Channel 4 chief executive is returning to the BBC after a three-year absence.

He was considered a model executive during his time at the BBC. His adept handling of BBC politics was shown when he transformed himself from a successful operator under John Birt into Mr Dyke's right-hand man as director of television.

He first impressed Mr Dyke, then still chief executive of Pearson Television, in 1997, when he gave an impassioned off-the-cuff defence of public service broadcasting at the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge.

It was a speech in Canada however, that gained Mr Thompson a reputation as a key policy maker, when he outlined the BBC's plans for its digital future. He was promptly given the job of steering through the BBC's new digital strategy, overseeing the transition of BBC Choice to BBC3 and BBC Knowledge to BBC4.

When he left to join Channel 4 in 2001, Mr Dyke gave him his blessing because of the valuable commercial experience he would gain there. This commercial experience will also have upped Mr Thompson's value in the eyes of Mr Grade, although the new chairman is known to have strong views on his successors at Channel 4.

One of the reasons for his reluctance to apply for the director general's post openly, may have been the feeling that he has left a job half done at Channel 4.

Last year he told executives at the channel that he wanted them to restore Channel 4 to its "core values", looking beyond big rating successes like Big Brother and strengthening its reputation for "investing in creative talent".

His successes include poaching The Simpsons from BBC, but he has also seen some ratings flops including the Saturday night gameshow Boys and Girls and RI:SE, the successor to The Big Breakfast.