Peter Cadbury

Peter Egbert Cadbury (6 February 1918 – 17 April 2006) was a British entrepreneur.

He was the son of Sir Egbert Cadbury, a World War I flying ace and managing director of Cadbury Brothers, the chocolate enterprise. He was educated at Leighton Park School, a Quaker school founded by his grandfather, George Cadbury and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Cadbury never worked in the family business. He followed his father into flying, with an early career as a test pilot for jet fighters, then qualified as a barrister, playing a minor role in the Nurenburg War Crimes trials, before deciding his future did not lie in law. Borrowing £75,000 from his father, Cadbury purchased the Keith Prowse theatre booking agency.

After this, he was involved as a company director in the establishment of Tyne Tees Television and led the consortium responsible for Westward Television, the first ITV franchise holder for the south-west of England, becoming its Executive Director. He also owned his own airline and travel business.

Cadbury was known for his frequent rows, with neighbours, the press, and even with his own board of directors. He was more than once involved in fistfights on roads, over his driving. He owned a Ferrari and a Bentley, numerous yachts, racehorses, properties in the West Indies, and a succession of grand country mansions, one of which had an airstrip and hangar for five aircraft. As a result of his on-going conflict with the IBA — the then regulator of ITV — Westward lost the round of franchise renewals in 1980, and were replaced by TSW.

Cadbury was an animal lover, who kept a parrot, a great Dane, and a Rwandan gorilla.

He married three times. The first time was to Benedicta Bruce in 1947 (with legendary Spitfire pilot Douglas Bader as best man), with whom he had a son and a daughter, the marriage ending in divorce in 1968. He married again in 1970 to Mrs. Jennifer Morgan-Jones, who was 27 years younger than him, and with whom he had another son (Joel Cadbury, one time owner of the Groucho Club), before they divorced in 1976. He married a third time, in 1976, to Mrs. Jane Mead, with whom he had two more sons.

External links

* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2006/04/18/db1801.xml Obituary] in "The Daily Telegraph", retrieved 18 April 2006
* [http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/comment/0,,1762367,00.html Obituary] in "The Guardian", April 27, 2006