About John Harvey-Jones
Sir John Harvey-Jones MBE was an English businessman. He was the chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries from 1982 to 1987. He was best known by the public for his BBC television show, Troubleshooter, in which he advised struggling businesses. After only 30 months in the job, having cut the UK workforce by one third, he had doubled the price of ICI shares and made ICI the first British company to make a profit of more than £1 billion. Harvey-Jones went on to join the submarine service in 1942, and received his first command at age 24. According to one newspaper, it was the BBC's Troubleshooter series, first broadcast in 1990, that made Harvey-Jones the most famous industrialist since Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Rising to the rank of lieutenant-commander, Harvey-Jones was awarded a military MBE in 1952 for his work in Naval Intelligence, although his citation stated that the award was for "fishery protection duties in the Baltic".
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.