Baptism of fire

Alumnus to be proud of No 79 is the man who set such a frank, forthright and open standard for companies in the wake of alarming glitches - Eurotunnel's Robert Malpas, whose company's ability to estimate the triviality of a fiercely burning fire in a confined space may have been based on the expertise he acquired with a first-class honours in mechanical engineering at Durham. Or maybe he learnt something from that fine upstanding democrat Francisco Franco, who conferred the Order of Civil Merit (class unspecified) on him in 1967.