IN: Michael Stock (born 3 December 1951) is an English songwriter, record producer and musician, best known for being a member of the songwriting and production team Stock Aitken and Waterman that achieved success in the 1980s and 1990s. He has written or produced numerous worldwide hits including 18 No. 1 records in America and the UK, and over a hundred top-40 hits. Stock is one of the most successful songwriters of all time as recognised by the Guinness Book of Records. As part of Stock Aitken and Waterman, he is acknowledged as the most successful producer-songwriter in British chart history and holds the record for the most No. 1 records with different acts, with 11.

Stock was born in Margate, Kent, England in 1951 and grew up in Swanley, Kent. He attended White Oak primary school and Swanley comprehensive school. At Swanley school he was involved in several school variety productions. He was self-taught in playing the piano and guitar and began writing songs at the age of seven. Inspired by The Beatles he soon became fixated with pop music and put together his first band at age 13, playing bass guitar and singing. Fascinated by the popular songwriting styles of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and writers such as Irving Berlin and the energy and freshness of The Beatles, he established a deep love of pop music. Stock signed a publishing contract when he was nineteen after earning a reputation as a budding songwriter, although no one had suggested a full-time career in the music world was a possibility. In 1970 Stock earned a placement at the University of Hull to study Drama and Theology and formed a band with a fellow student, the later acclaimed Oscar-winning director, Anthony Minghella. Whilst at Hull, Stock met his wife Bobbie and left university when she graduated to concentrate his efforts in making it in music. In 1975 they married and soon after, sold their house in Bury, Lancashire to move back south Stock played his first paid, solo gig at Aveley Working Men's Club in Essex in 1976, earning twenty five pounds. By the late 1970s Stock, now living in Blackheath, South London, was performing up and down the country. Performing solo, in a duo or with bands Mirage and Nightwork, Stock gained a good reputation for his live performances and was regularly booked for venues like the Hilton Hotel, Grosvenor House and the Dorchester in Mayfair. Throughout 1979 to 1981 Stock was gigging every night of the week in various bands embracing pop, dance, old standards, rock or funk. Stock's band had gone through several guitar players before he was alerted to Matt Aitken; a guitarist who had been spotted by another member of his band working on a cruise ship. Stock contacted Aitken to offer him a role in the band. Playing on cruise ships and in various bands of his own, Aitken was an accomplished guitarist whose style could adapt to any type of music. In 1982 Stock moved to Abbey Wood, South London where, along with Matt Aitken he acquired a recording desk and tape machine and formed his first record label. During the break of one of Mirage's sets on New Year's Eve 1983, Stock informed the band he would be leaving and was going into the studio to pursue his career as a songwriter and producer. Matt Aitken agreed to join him and from January 1984 onwards the pair worked exclusively in recording studios.

What was his first band called?

OUT:

IN: Peter Hitchens was born in the Crown Colony of Malta, where his father, a career naval officer, was stationed as part of the then Mediterranean Fleet of the Royal Navy. Hitchens originally hoped to become a naval officer himself, but an eye defect prevented him from doing so. He was educated at the Leys School and the Oxford College of Further Education before being accepted at the University of York, where he studied Philosophy and Politics and was a member of Alcuin College, graduating in 1973. He later commented that he "must have been a severe disappointment" to his parents after making sure he "would never get into Oxbridge" by sabotaging his own education, through actions which included being arrested breaking into a government fall-out shelter in Cambridge.

Hitchens worked for the Daily Express between 1977 and 2000, initially as a reporter specialising in education and industrial and labour affairs, then as a political reporter, and subsequently as deputy political editor. Leaving parliamentary journalism to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, he reported on the decline and collapse of communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries, which culminated in a stint as Moscow correspondent and reporting on the final months of the Soviet Union and the early years of the Russian Federation in 1990-92. He took part in reporting the UK 1992 general election, closely following Neil Kinnock. He then became the Daily Express Washington correspondent. Returning to Britain in 1995, he became a commentator and columnist. In 2000, Hitchens left the Daily Express after its acquisition by Richard Desmond; Hitchens stated that working for Desmond would have represented a moral conflict of interest. Hitchens joined The Mail on Sunday, where he has a weekly column and weblog in which he debates directly with readers. Hitchens has also written for The Spectator and The American Conservative magazines, and occasionally for more left-leaning publications such as The Guardian, Prospect, and the New Statesman. In 2010, Hitchens was described by Edward Lucas in The Economist as "a forceful, tenacious, eloquent and brave journalist. He lambasts woolly thinking and crooked behaviour at home and abroad." After being shortlisted in 2007 and 2009, Hitchens won the Orwell Prize in political journalism in 2010. Peter Kellner, one of the Orwell Prize judges, described Hitchens's writing as being "as firm, polished and potentially lethal as a Guardsman's boot."

what was the basic reason for this moral conflict of interest?

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IN: Hughes was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, was a pilot in the First World War, with later careers as a solicitor and company director. He died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12.

Hughes met his first wife, Danne Emerson, in London in 1967. Together they became involved in the counterculture of the 1960s, exploring drug use and sexual freedom. They divorced in 1981; she died of a brain tumor in 2003. Their son, Danton, Hughes's only child, was named after the French revolutionary Georges Danton. Danton Hughes, a sculptor, committed suicide in April 2001. He had been in a long term relationship with fashion designer Jenny Kee, who found his body on 15 April. Robert Hughes later wrote: "I miss Danton and always will, although we had been miserably estranged for years and the pain of his loss has been somewhat blunted by the passage of time". Hughes was married to his second wife, Victoria Whistler, a housewife from California, from 1981 until a divorce in 1996. In 1999, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal car accident south of Broome, Western Australia. He was returning from a fishing trip and driving on the wrong side of the road when he collided head on with another car carrying three occupants. He was trapped in the car for three hours before being airlifted to Perth in critical condition. Hughes was in a coma for five weeks after the crash. In a 2000 court hearing, Hughes's defence barrister alleged that the occupants of the other car had been transporting illicit drugs at the time of the accident and were at fault. In 2003 Hughes pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm and was fined A$2,500. He also allegedly described the crown prosecutor, Lloyd Rayney, as a "curry muncher", which resulted in a defamation action and out-of-court settlement. Hughes recounts the story of the accident and his recovery in the first chapter of his 2006 memoir Things I Didn't Know. In 2001, Hughes wed his third wife, the American artist and art director Doris Downes. "Apart from being a talented painter, she saved my life, my emotional stability, such as it is", he said.

Was he injured?

OUT:
He was trapped in the car for three hours before being airlifted to Perth in critical condition.