THERESA May, the Tory education spokesperson, was one of the few public figures to mourn his demise. She must have been unimpressed by the audience at the Schools Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday night. Debonair master of ceremonies, Richard Stilgoe, called the event “the first Chris Woodhead farewell concert”. Let’s just say the cheers were even more spirited than for “Land of Hope and Glory” at the end of the evening. Enough, surely, to put a smile on the face of the Government representative at the event Estelle Morris.

The schools minister may well have been concealing a smirk when interviewed by Jeremy Vine on BBC2‘s Newsnight. Vine quizzed her: “Are you pleased that he is going?”

Morris: “Mr Woodhead deci-ded that it was time to move on.”

Vine: “Do you think that he was a good head of OFSTED?”

Morris: “There has only been one.” (In fact Stewart Sutherland, now vice-chancellor of Edinburgh University, was the first).

Vine: “Did you like him?”

Morris: “I worked with him.”