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Benjamin Cohen highlighted the significant role that serendipity has played in the successful and very varied career he has enjoyed since he left QE 23 years ago.

In a video conversation with the School’s Student Leadership Team and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Ambassadors arranged during LGBT+ History Month, Ben (OE 1993–1998) told the story of his high-profile life from the age 15 to 38.

He took in his days as a dotcom millionaire, his emergence as a national newspaper columnist and TV correspondent, through to his current role as CEO of PinkNews – an online newspaper reaching tens of millions around the world which describes itself as “the brand for the global LGBT+ community and the next generation”.

He began by explaining that his time at QE was dogged by illness from when he was 12, around the time of his bar mitzvah. “I got glandular fever…I ended up not ever really recovering. I actually have MS now: it just took a long time to be diagnosed.”

It was because of his illness that he left QE immediately after his GCSEs and went to the Jewish Free School (now JFS) for his A-level studies. “When I was at JFS, I started my first business, right at the time of the internet first being a thing.”

This business was JewishNet.co.uk – “Britain’s first social network before the term was invented” – which offered an agony aunt, dating service, kosher recipes and even a cyber-rabbi. “I think serendipity is really important. I probably would not have started that if I had stayed at QE,” Ben told his audience of current QE pupils, before adding that he was not suggesting they should follow suit and leave!

They were heady days: “I found myself above Prince William in the Sunday Times Rich List – supposedly worth a lot of money.”

He then sold JewishNet and started another business, CyberBritain – “a dot.com darling for a couple of years” – which he ran during his gap year and then while at university. Among other things, it launched a UK-specific search engine powered by its own technology and attempted to establish a service similar to Spotify.

During much of his involvement with CyberBritain, Benjamin was also an undergraduate at King’s College London, where he read Religion, Philosophy and Ethics.

If serependity was behind him going to JFS and starting his first business, it now played a part in another episode in his professional life. “Something really random happened: my then-business owned a lot of assets – domain names – and one of the domain names was itunes.co.uk. We just happened to own it.”

Apple duly sued and this attracted the attraction of the national newspapers. “I was asked by the guy who was reporting on the story for The Times if I wanted to go to their Christmas party and I said, ‘Oh, why not?’”

At the party, he met The Times’ business editor, who asked him to write a column. “Weirdly, at the age of 21, I was writing a weekly column about e-business and technology…for The Times – mostly because the grown-ups didn’t really understand how the internet worked!”

When he then asked to write for the newspaper about LGB issues – as they were then termed – he was turned down, because someone else already had that role. “It was something I wanted to write, so I decided to write it anyway and put it up on the internet: I put it on a website I called PinkNews.co.uk – and everything kind of flowed from there.”

About a year later, while PinkNews was still small, he was asked by Channel 4 if he wanted to become its technology correspondent. An audition with the channel’s Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy went well and Ben duly got the job. “I was 23 – the youngest-ever correspondent on a network news programme.”

For six years, he fulfilled that role alongside his work for PinkNews, which took a leading role in the battles over same-sex marriage – “equal marriage”. With Ben leading this campaign, he eventually felt he should concentrate on it full-time and so he left Channel 4. (From 2010 until 2017, he did, however, do work as a presenter for the BBC, including writing and presenting a critically acclaimed documentary, I was a teenage dot.com millionaire. He is also a longstanding UK trustee and non-executive director of Humanity & Inclusion, a global disability development charity.)

PinkNews has, he says, “grown and grown and grown”. And that growth had actually accelerated during the pandemic. “This time last year, we had 20 people that worked at PinkNews; now it’s over 40….Every month, about 50 million people consume our content,” he said. As well as attracting views through its website, PinkNews gains heavy exposure as the exclusive LGBT content provider on Snapchat, where it has seven channels, on Twitter, where it is the exclusive LGBT video partner, and on other social media channels.

“It has grown into quite a big business. I don’t really have to do any of the writing or anything like that any more because I have a whole team that does that,” he said.

Ben’s video session was recorded so that it can be used by form tutors to stimulate discussion among all year groups as an eQE online resource within QE’s personal development and wellbeing programme.

After his talk, there was a Q&A session when boys asked questions on topics including religion & LGBT rights, barriers still facing LGBT people and national changes in sex education and religious education.

To read more about the Q&A session, read our news report on the visit here.

A world-class sprinter who has automatically qualified for the Tokyo Olympics explained to QE’s young sportsmen the long road he has to follow in order to achieve those explosive seconds of success in a few short metres on the track.

In a special virtual lecture, Antonio Infantino covered areas such as nutrition and sleep, outlined what he does in training, and spoke about the importance of the right mental approach.

Director of Sport Jonathan Hart said: “My thanks go to Antonio for a talk that gave a detailed picture of all the ingredients that lie behind élite-level sports success. It was great to hear his own story and I am grateful that he gave such thoughtful answers to the boys’ questions.”

QE’s now well-established lecture programme gives pupils of all ages the opportunity to learn from and question prominent individuals in their respective fields. It continued online through both lockdowns as part of the School’s work to ensure that boys did not miss out during the period of remote education.

Antonio, who will be 30 later this month, is a top 200m sprinter with a personal best of 20.41 seconds. Born to Italian parents but raised in Hertfordshire, he is based in London.

He is the three times British Indoor 200m Champion and has competed at European and World championships. He decided to switch nationality in his early 20s to follow his Italian heritage and represent Italy.

“If the Games go ahead, I hope to be in Tokyo later this year,” he said. His 2021 goals are to make the Olympic final in the 4x100m – he has already automatically qualified for the Games in this event – and the 200m. Following this, Antonio is hoping to ‘medal’ at the Mediterranean Games and European Championships 2022, before looking ahead to his second Olympic Games in Paris.

Antonio delivered his lecture in two lunchtime sessions. Both were open to all boys. “It all started for me when I was in secondary school,” he said. Inspired by Usain Bolt’s remarkable victory in the Beijing Olympics 100m in 2008, Antonio achieved a remarkable 100m time of 11.3s while in Year 8. At the age of 14, he achieved 10.9s, which, he said, was one of the fastest times of all time for that age group.

In his 20-minute talk, he spoke to the boys about nutrition, about diet and about the “often overlooked” importance of sleep, before giving them a taste of what he does in training. He then spent more than 10 minutes answering their questions.

Antonio paid tribute to the support of his parents, with his mother cooking healthy food and his father taxiing him around the country to various athletics events when he was younger.

In fact, when he went to university, the lack of such support – he had to cook for himself – coupled with some partying, led to a dip in his performances. “Through those bad years when I was not running well, I learned once again to be patient.”

In 2018, after a series of disappointments he nearly quit, but decided to carry on and has since achieved new levels of success. “That taught me that…you are going to fail [and] if you fail, you are going to learn. I have lost more races than I have won, but I think I have learned more from my failures than from the races I have won. So, keep patient and keep persevering and you can still achieve what you want to achieve.”

During the Q&A session, Antonio discussed the issue of ‘nature vs nurture’. Evidence suggested that through long hours of practice and expert training alone, anyone could reach élite levels in certain fields of endeavour. He pointed to the example of László Polgár, Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist, who trained his three daughters to play chess almost from the cradle. They went on to tremendous success, with one, Judit, widely considered to be the best female chess player ever.

Yet Antonio said it was not true that anyone could reach the very top in athletics, since in sport, genetics were also important: “You do need to pick your parents carefully if you want to be a top sprinter!”

Nevertheless, for aspiring athletes to achieve success, mindset is very important, he said. “Really believe you can do something,” he advised the boys. “Mindset is hugely important in my sport. I had a lot of naysayers…self-belief is really important.”

Asked about how he is paid, he spoke of his financial dependence on sponsorship and said that he must wear sports clothing made by his sponsor, rather than by other manufacturers.

He had some specific advice when asked about his approach to a race by one of the School’s sprinters, saying that he maps out in his mind how the race will go. He advised sprinters to try to ‘explode’ out of the blocks and then to take long strides in the early stages of the race, rather than going at a fast cadence, in order to conserve energy.

He urged a “multisports” approach for the boys. “I think that everyone should try a bunch of sports, and that’s the best way to find one you are good at.” Antonio himself had played a number of sports during his school years, reaching academy level with Watford FC. He dropped this involvement in order to focus on athletics, but still enjoys playing various sports informally, stating that the general fitness they develop in some ways makes his specialised athletics training easier.

Pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s School have been celebrating the achievements of women and reflecting on the issues they face, as people around the world marked International Women’s Day (IWD).

English teacher Eleanor Pickering put together a pack of resources to encourage discussion in tutor groups on the day itself or – with boys returning to their classrooms this week after Covid testing – in the following few days.

The resources include a PowerPoint presentation, suggestions for activities and videos. They ranged from the literally parochial – the recording of a Cheshire parish council meeting that went viral last month – to the global – an Oxfam presentation that posed questions about international aspects, including women’s earnings around the world.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We recognise the importance – not least since we are an all-boys school – of celebrating the achievements of women and girls, of raising awareness of bias and of challenging inequality.

“The work and lives of female scientists, writers, historical figures and politicians are increasingly being covered across the curriculum, while outside lessons, we seek to keep these matters to the fore through discussions in tutor groups, through our Personal Development Programme and through our appointment of senior pupils as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors.”

IWD was adopted by the United Nations in 1977. Its theme this year was #ChooseToChallenge. Tutors at QE took the opportunity to ask boys what they might choose to challenge in their own lives.

The Oxfam presentation asked how much less women earn than men globally and on average – the answer is 23%, according to a UN report.

The presentation explained that while gender imbalances are reducing in some areas – 25 per cent of all national parliamentarians are now women, up from 11 per cent in 1995 – in other areas, formidable barriers remain, with, for example, women in 18 countries needing to have permission from their husbands to work outside the home.

The Handforth parish council Zoom recording became famous because of the calm and decisive way in which Jackie Weaver – chief officer of the Cheshire Association of Local Councils – dealt with councillors during a heated, and sometimes chaotic, meeting.

Other resources available to the boys’ tutors included Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk from 2012 entitled We should all be feminists in which she urged people to work towards a different, fairer world with happier men and women who are truer to themselves. This perennially popular talk has had more than 4.6m views to date.

A further suggestion was a TED talk from Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project.

Preparations for a safe return to lessons at the School this week are running according to plan, with sixth-formers experiencing a smooth start to the new testing programme yesterday.

Years 12 and 13 were the first at QE to benefit from the asymptomatic testing programme that is clearing the way for classroom learning to start for all year groups on Thursday.

In line with Government instructions, all pupils taking part in the programme are being tested before returning to School for lessons, so that any positive cases can be taken out of circulation before they have the opportunity to mix with each other and with staff.

Volunteers have rallied round, working alongside members of staff to make sure all 1,250 boys can be tested in time.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Testing all our pupils is a major logistical exercise, and one that, of course, has to be conducted in Covid-safe conditions.

“It is certainly a challenge, but I am pleased to report that the first day went without a hitch, with the operation running both calmly and efficiently.

“Although the testing is not compulsory, I am most encouraged to see that the participation rate is very high indeed, which will certainly aid the effectiveness of the programme in protecting all students and staff.”

Pupils are all being given specific times to attend over the first half of the week, with Years 9–11 due in for their first tests today and Years 7 and 8 on Wednesday.

In the meantime, QE’s programme of remote learning continues, with boys following a full timetable at home using the School’s eQE online learning platform and MS Teams.

They will have their second and third tests from Thursday onwards, once they are back in lessons.

The group of volunteers involved in the programme spans the Elizabethan community, including parents, former members of staff and other friends of the School.

“Some are giving up significant amounts of their time over the course of the in-School testing programme, for which we are all very grateful,” said Mr Enright.

“These volunteers are working alongside members of staff, with everyone trained for their respective roles.”

“It was, of course, great to see pupils back on site today – a foretaste of Thursday, when we look forward eagerly to seeing all the boys back in lessons here.”

Renowned saxophonist, composer and educator Mike Hall kept QE’s senior musicians on their toes with a masterclass on jazz improvisation.

His hour-long, richly illustrated, online talk focused on examples of improvisation by two of the jazz greats, Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis.

The boys now have a couple of weeks to submit recordings of their own improvisations before Mike runs another two masterclasses in which he will offer them direct feedback on their work.

Director of Music Ruth Partington said: “This was a great event and we are very lucky to be able to welcome a player of Mike’s stature ‘to’ QE. At this time of year, we would normally be holding our annual Jazz Evening, so the timing of this first masterclass was particularly appropriate.

“Mike’s talk combined the perfect mix of approachability with some challenging concepts for our advanced students. He talked about how to improvise over chords using the notes of the chord, about guide tones and about specific scales such as minor pentatonics.

“And he included some live demonstrations on Zoom: it was wonderful to hear him play.

“The audience clearly enjoyed his presentation, and there were some interesting questions at the end.”

The class briefly covered the history of jazz, with Mike stressing that it is an “aural music…[that] should be learned initially by listening to and emulating great players”. He moved on to the specifics of improvisation, including the need to acquire the requisite skills, such as “strengthening the connection between your ears and fingers”.

Mike was Head of Jazz Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music for 20 years, during which time he directed well over 100 concerts with the RNCM Big Band.  He still teaches at the RNCM and has also taught at many jazz summer schools and been a consultant and composer for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM – a Music examinations board).

He began with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and then spent 20 years with Michael Garrick, the late English jazz pianist and composer – a period which saw them tour Malaysia as well as make several CD recordings and national radio broadcasts.

Today, Mike is a regular member of the Echoes of Ellington Orchestra and runs his own jazz duo, quartet and octet, for which he also writes.

A video of the masterclass can be seen on the QE Music department’s YouTube channel.