[2] On a scholarship, he was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, before gaining a place to read History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, earning a double first.
[4] In this role in 1988 he signed off the controversial programme "Death on the Rock", an edition of the This Week series about Operation Flavius, the shooting in Gibraltar of three unarmed members of the IRA.
[5] Blamed in part for Thames losing its franchise to broadcast at the end of 1992, Elstein delivered the previous year's MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival.
In his speech he mocked what was now an auction as Margaret Thatcher's "National Lottery", criticised the Conservative government for behaving with "spite" towards ITV, and called the franchise round "a death on the rack to make up for 'Death on the Rock'.
"[6] Elstein had hoped that a clause in the Broadcasting Act 1990 would save Thames thanks to its past reputation, since underbidding Carlton, the eventual winners, had been a deliberate choice.