Island Life October/November 2018

Interview
MBE for
business
‘maverick’
After business advisor Hammie Tappenden was named in the New Years
Honours List, she decided that there was only one place she wanted the
presentation of her MBE to take place – and it wasn’t Buckingham Palace.
Instead, Hammie opted to have a ceremony here on the Isle of Wight, presided
over by Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant and attended by family and friends, along
with many of the people she’s helped to set up in business over the years.
As it turned out, the MBE presentation wasn’t her only
reason for celebration on that September 1st date, as Jackie
McCarrick discovered when she caught up with her.
When Hammie called her longtime
partner Rob to tell him
about her being awarded the
MBE, she mischievously prefaced
the news with the quip: “Have
you got a smart suit?” and then
swiftly added, “don’t worry, I’m
not asking you to marry me!”
The joke clearly planted a seed
in Rob’s mind, though, because
just a couple of months before
September’s big award ceremony,
he proposed - with the novel
suggestion that they could be
married on the same date.
And so it turned out that
Hammie became Mrs Ford
at Newport Register Office in
the morning - witnessed by
two friends and her daughter
Ellie and partner – and
then, a few hours later in a
different kind of ceremony at
Porchfield Cricket Club, she
officially became an MBE.
Quite a day by anybody’s
standards – not least for the quick
changes of clothes required, from
morning wedding outfit into
tee-shirt and jeans to prepare
the self-catered reception buffet,
and then into posh clothes for
the formal presentation by Major
General Sir Martin White KCVO
CB CBE in the afternoon.
“It was a fabulous day and all the
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