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Charlie Mayfield 1986.
The son of an army colonel, Andrew Charles Mayfield was born on Christmas Day, 1966. Educated at Radley College, he opted not to go to university and was commissioned from Sandhurst into the Scots Guards in April 1986, having been awarded the Sword of Honour as the best cadet in his intake. A few weeks later, he was a teenage platoon commander on the streets of Northern Ireland. Resigning his commission in September 1991, he studied at Cranfield School of Management, graduating with a Master of Business Administration degree. When interviewed for The Daily Telegraph some years later, he said about his time in the army: ‘I worked with some truly impressive and superb people; I learned a lot from them’.
Mayfield’s first job in ‘civvy street’ was with SmithKline Beecham as an assistant product manager for the beverage Horlicks. He later discovered that it was his military experience that gave him the edge over other applicants, not his MBA. Later he was promoted to marketing manager for Lucozade. In 1996, he joined McKinsey & Company as a management consultant specialising in the retail industry before
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