Mike Granatt is a public relations and communications professional, formerly a senior British civil servant, and the first head of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat of the Cabinet Office in 2001, the same year he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath for "exceptional public service." For 25 years Granatt held a range of senior communication posts in the British civil service, and was press secretary to five cabinet ministers, both Conservative and Labour. Alongside his communications management roles he specialised in crisis management and counterterrorist issues, and his final posting was to create and lead Britain's civil crisis management unit and the government's communication specialists. He is regularly interviewed in the media on the handling of terrorism and major emergencies. Early life Granatt attended Westminster City School from 1961, then Queen Mary College, University of London where he ran the students' union newspaper for two years. He briefly appeared in what its members considered the legendary folk/rock band Pig Rider penning some of the lyrics for the curiously mis-titled Paeolithic Transport Blues. Career After working as a trade and local news journalist, Granatt joined the civil service in 1979 as an information officer. After junior postings in the Department of Employment and the Home Office, he joined the Department of Energy and became director of information within three years. In this role he managed the response to the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster. He went on to hold similar posts, becoming Director of Public Affairs and Internal Communication for the Metropolitan Police in 1989, Director of Communication at the Department of the Environment in 1992, and Director of Communication at the Home Office in 1994. He was nicknamed "Metal Mickey" due to his always having the latest gadgets. While at the Home Office he was appointed head of profession for the Government Information Service, becoming full-time in that post on transfer to the Cabinet Office in 1998. This move, to provide direct support to Sir Richard Wilson (now Lord Wilson of Dinton), then cabinet secretary, was made to help deliver changes facing the renamed Government Information and Communication Service (GICS) after Labour won power in 1997. Much of his work concentrated on reforms, including founding a media monitoring unit in September 1997 due to ministers' dissatisfaction with the work of the GIS, and criticising the government's advertising campaigns as fragmented and wasteful. He was also the central