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The OM of the Year Award  ceremony is such an inspiring occasion that more students should attend it.... and  “next year there will be more,” promised Craig Considine the new Headmaster, after presenting the awards for the first time on the last day of  October. Clearly moved, he told the 50 or so students among the 150 guests in the Meyer Theatre: “It’s a wonderful occasion to see where you can go in life.”

This year’s ceremony – the ninth – was among the most impressive that I have witnessed since the award was first started in 2000. Awards Day is a Speech Day in 3D. On Speech Day students will hear and they and their parents will applaud to the rafters such sentiments as “Millfield School finds your particular gift and brings out the best in every one.” Or even as Paul Davies, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Producer/Director, one of this year’s winners, said: “What does Millfield do? It gets into your DNA and it stays there for the rest of your life and that is a very good thing.”

On Speech Days such phrases like these are true but seem like platitudes only, because the prize-winning students are starting out on life. On OM Awards Day, these platitudes come with the accompanying flesh and bone of experience and triumph, this year brought more vividly to life perhaps by our six winners than ever before.

A most poignant example was provided in an eloquent thank-you speech by  Professor Keith McAdam, who with his wife Penny (Spencer), herself a distinguished OM and former school girls tennis champion,  has devoted a lifetime to fighting serious diseases all over the world. In 2004 Keith was the first director of the new institute for infectious diseases in Uganda where AIDS has been particularly destructive in its effects.

Professor McAdam said: “ Penny and I have tried to hold to the creative vision that was the centre of what we heard at Millfield, propagated by Jack Meyer, that all of us have something special at which we can succeed. And that has remained a life challenge for me and Penny to discover in others. I think it has been particularly so in the last five years, as we have worked with large numbers of people living with HIV in Uganda and realizing that they all have something special to be discovered in their new life as HIV positive people,and this needs to be allowed expression.”

The most moving part of the 45 minute celebration was, as always, visual, thanks to the technical expertise of Millfield’s master of backdrop video presentation - MalcolmSmele. BBC sports footage, which Paul Davies helped to locate, showed those triumphant moments when OM of the Year John McFall overcame his injuries (his right leg amputated above the knee as a result of a motorcycle accident) to take bronze medal in the Beijing Paralympics. He covered the 100 metre sprint in 13 seconds, eight times as fast as the Awards brilliant compère John Davies said most of us could run on two good legs. On the backdrop of the screen, we saw the child face of McFall when he first came to the school, a face that could not foreshadow his resilience and fortitude of later years. Here was someone whose belief in himself, nurtured on the playing fields of Millfield, must be immense. We hope he will be present at next year’s ceremony to collect his award.

Less poignant but equally revealing of the DNA of Millfield, was the experience of James Nathan. James was academic at Millfield and went on to study philosophy at King’s College, London. However, he had always liked cooking and he was the only boy in his year to take GCSE Home Economics. He became a barrister on the grounds that if he didn’t like it, it would be easier for a barrister to take up cooking than for a chef to be called to the Bar.

And so it proved. But in a recorded interview with Rod Speed, Chairman of the Millfield Society, James mentioned one incident at school which helped to change the direction of his life. He always liked cooking and he was caught one morning in the house kitchen by his housemaster cooking pot noodles on a plate heated dangerously over an electric toaster. Far from upbraiding him on the fire risk, the housemaster came back the next day with a special electric hot plate. James said the arrival of the hot plate made a lasting impression on him; this year he won the BBC Master Chef of the Year.

Another example of how the school is quick to pick up hidden talent was confirmed on film by drummer/composer Stewart Copeland, then touring the world with the re-launch of The Police. Before he arrived at Millfield his father asked if there would be room on campus for “his rather large and complicated drum equipment”. A Nissen hut was provided by Boss, and Stewart was allowed to practise there after supper one day a week and was given special drum lessons.

Interviewed by roving reporter former Chairman of the Millfield Society, Professor Robert Clark, Stewart recalled that he was a ‘skinny American kid’ who, when he came to Millfield, never felt he was up to much. But it was at Millfield that he learned from Boss that “there is something in everybody and it was his job to find it.” When Boss bumped into Stewart, he would say: “Hello, young Copeland, how’s that music of yours going?”

Laurence Davis, the very successful businessman, was rewarded for his spectacular work raising funds for the Variety Club. He said: “Millfield is not a school. Don’t let anyone tell you that it is a school. It is something completely different.” He then went on to describe how he spoke to about 25 OMs every single week and frequently meets OMs as he travels to different countries. “There is a camaraderie about the place which, as children, you won’t know until you have left the school. But it is quite amazing.”

The day was rounded off with a special, well-deserved award to a non-Millfieldian. The awards were initiated during Peter Johnson’s headship and, in presenting him with an Honorary Award, Chairman of Governors, Adrian White, paid a stirring tribute to Peter as manager of the best school in the world  “in terms of facilities and performance.” He concluded: “In fact I can quite frankly say that in terms of quantum leap Peter has taken this school further forward than any other headmaster in their time.”

And it was Peter Johnson who brought the proceedings down to earth by reminding the audience that they were meeting that day at a particularly tense and difficult time for Old Millfieldians. They had recently lost Mark Foster, one of their three hopes in Strictly Come Dancing, the other two being Andrew Castle and of course John Sergeant, who later left the show in a resounding burst of publicity. Peter asked what it said about Millfield that it could boast three competitors in such a competition. His answer was: “It shows they are willing to have a crack at anything. They don’t mind making fools of themselves. They have a sense of fun and there is a can-do attitude about them which is admirable.”

All part of Millfield’s ever-sticking DNA.