Dawn Airey gave no impression that she was about to quit ITV on Monday evening when she presented a cake to Marco Pierre White to mark his 30 years in the restaurant business, in the presence of numerous journalists. However, the ambitious Ms Airey had already told Michael Grade that she had been offered the chance to return to Five, as chief executive.

At a crunch meeting with Mr Grade the morning after the celebration, Ms Airey, 47, said that she had been offered a big increase on her £450,000-a-year salary to return to a channel she said she regarded as her spiritual home.

Mr Grade’s argument that she was doing herself damage — walking out after only eight months running ITV’s production business — failed to persuade her.

If the news was a surprise at ITV, it was a shock at Five. RTL, Five’s owner, had recruited her, but Jane Lighting, the incumbent chief executive, appeared not to know. Only last week, Ms Lighting was inviting people to a box at Lord’s and as late as yesterday, guests were being chased up over whether they would attend. RTL had no statement prepared when ITV announced Ms Airey’s departure.

Ms Airey was chief executive of Five between 2000 and 2003, where she memorably said that the fledegling channel was “more than about football, films and f*****g”. Nobody, though, remembered the qualification at the beginning of the quote.

She left to join BSkyB, then quit to join the short-lived start-up production business Iostar. This, though, did not have enough funding and Ms Airey is thought to have suffered financially. She lasted only a few days and it was Mr Grade who rescued her career.

A clearly unhappy Mr Grade, who had been banking on Ms Airey to develop ITV’s production business internationally, did not mention Ms Airey by name in the resignation statement, but ITV was letting people know that she had a 12-month notice period and that she would be forced into “an extended period of gardening leave”.

Ms Airey had been considered a potential successor to Mr Grade, but there was talk that she had already been trying to boost her position. An attempt to take over the running of ITV’s network as well as its production business failed this year. It will be some time before the television veteran can start competing with her former employer.

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