People like Norman Collins

Norman Richard Collins (3 October 1907 – 6 September 1982) was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. This was the first organisation to break the BBC's broadcasting monopoly when it began transmitting in 1955.

Only son and youngest of three children of publisher's clerk and illustrator Oliver Norman Collins (d. 1917/18) and Lizzie Ethel (née Nicholls), Collins was born at Beaconsfield. He had a French-Huguenot background on his father's side and Welsh farming stock on his mother's. He was educated at a school founded by William Ellis at Gospel Oak, Hampstead.