(CVO) in the 2000 Birthday Honours. As chairman Wight helped to raise over £50million for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. From 1997 to 2006 he was chairman of Arts & Business, a charity that encourages Business to support the arts. In 2003 Wight founded the Ideas Foundation, a charity that helps identify and nurture creatively gifted young people, primarily from ethnic minority backgrounds. The organisation has collaborated with 400 schools to date and in 2016 announced a partnership with The Evening Standard. In September 2016 the foundation will establish a free school in West Greenwich which will focus on creative skills. Wight is also on the Board of Directors at Plotr, a site aimed at providing a wide variety of careers advice and guidance, including through the use of an online game. Media Wight has written two books "The Day The Pigs Refused To Be Driven To Market" (1972), a study of advertising and consumerism and "The Peacocks Tail and the Reputation Reflex; the neuroscience of arts sponsorship"(2007), a study of the biological purpose of art. His advertising career was profiled on BBC Radio 4 in a programme titled 'The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On'. Personal life Wight married Countess Paola Kovacz von Csaky, a barrister specialising in intellectual property law, in 2013. He has five children from previous marriages. His father, Ian, was a Brigadier in the British Army. His mother, Pamela (née) Groves was the daughter of Air Commodore R.M. Groves, the first Deputy Chief of the Air Staff of the RAF. Two of Wight's great grandparents were members of Parliament for Salford East and Salford West where the family brewery, Groves and Withnal was located. The Groves family established the Salford Lads' Club, still operating today, which featured on the cover of the Smiths' album The Queen is Dead in 1986. During the 1987 general election, Wight stood as the Conservative candidate for the then-safe Labour seat of Bishop Auckland. His 18,613 votes were unmatched by any Conservative candidate until the 2017 General Election; of three candidates, he came second. He retains an active interest in politics and ran an anti-Gordon Brown campaign at the 2010 general election. Wight was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to diversity in the creative industries. Military career In 2018, The British Army appointed Wight an