I'm not a John McEnroe in the sense that I will have a tantrum if I don't [win] but for me winning matters and I like to be part of something successful."The recent London bombings landed Duncan with one of his toughest days as he had to decide on amendments to the schedule to cover the evolving story. "I play five-a-side football pretty much every Monday night at a school near home. I go home see the kids have a bit of tea and then go and play football. In the winter I play centre-forward at hockey, I like to score goals I play golf and I play tennis," he says. "I think it is very important for us - it's a very good show and is doing extremely well at the moment."So there you are, Andy Duncan: Christian, rebel, Big Brother aficionado .. and hardball sports fanatic.

I always watch it and this year and last year have been absolutely cracking," he says. "The really big point I was trying to make was that television ... "It was an inaccurate headline that then got repeated around the place," he says. "It's a smaller organisation and much more agile and it's whole remit is about being the rebel and taking risks." Such swashbuckling language does not quite fit the image of the trendy vicar.Neverthless, when Duncan recently delivered a high-profile lecture on the influence of the television industry he was accused in a press headline of portraying Big Brother as a "Christian parable" He seems hurt by this "poor" coverage. Within two years he was on the BBC executive board and before he left the corporation in 2004 he had confounded cynics by turning the digital terrestrial television service Freeview into such a success that it is now in five million homes and is widely regarded as being better placed than Sky to benefit from digital switchover in 2012."I feel more at home at Channel 4 than I did either at Unilever or the BBC," he says of his first year at Horseferry Road.

Hasty retractions were made as Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson handed the plum job to Duncan - virtually an unknown to most of his future colleagues.Duncan, who will be 43 later this month, is a business graduate who made a reputation marketing margarines at Unilever, building the "I can't believe it's not butter" brand and having the inspiration to align Flora with the London Marathon.He didn't enter the broadcasting industry until 2001, when he joined the BBC as director of marketing and communications, ending a 17-year relationship with Unilever. Industry commentators had predicted that Peter Fincham, then head of Britain's biggest independent producer Talkback Thames and since recruited as controller of BBC1, would get the job. The commandment that had the most votes was 'treat others as you'd like to be treated yourself' and to me there's a lot of truth in that. I think a lot of industries, and broadcast is no different, seem to have a lot of people who fall out with each other, make enemies with each other and in some cases bear grudges - for me life's too short for that. but I think there were major issues about its longer term direction and strategy and where it was going."This reference to Thompson's tenure at C4 is a rebuttal of critics who suggested Duncan was too much of a touchy-feely leader, an evangelical Christian who hates wearing suits and lacks the mettle to lead a company with a turnover of £841m in the unforgiving world of commercial broadcasting.As he defines his vision, talking over the soft-rock of the pub sound system, Duncan is insistent he leads from the front. You can be tough, you can make difficult decisions but still get on with people."The reference to the commandments would suit those who seek to paint him as a figure akin to the trendy vicar caricature of Tony Blair in Private Eye's "parish of St Albion".Andy Duncan's appointment as chief executive of Channel 4 last year was a major surprise.