Then it was Iain Lobban, the outgoing head of GCHQ.
The BBC's outgoing head of drama Ben Stephenson then gave it the green light for BBC1.
He is an unusual choice: the endowment's outgoing head, Sheldon Hackney, had been president of two universities before his elevation.
"Does history repeat itself?" asked Duvvuri Subbarao, the outgoing head of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Mr Karzai should insist that the outgoing head quickly announces, as promised, a timetable for the 2014 presidential election.
Earlier this week Sir Richard Lambert, the outgoing head of the CBI, also called for a "road map" towards lower personal taxes.
Jonathan Evans, the outgoing head of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, made a similar point ahead of last year's London Olympic Games.
Liam Burns, perhaps Chowen's closest rival and the outgoing head of the NUS in Scotland, calls the revelation "damning of the union in the extreme".
The majority of unionists, therefore, will not welcome a President McGuinness in the way they tentatively accepted Mary McAleese, the outgoing head of state.
A month later, he co-hosted a farewell fete for Sheila C. Bair, the outgoing head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Lucas van Praag, the outgoing head of Goldman Sachs's public relations department, has given many interviews to the media over his 12 years at the firm.
