Aston Science Park founder Derek Harris, who has died at the relatively early age of 71, was something of a rarity on the West Midlands business scene.
Outwardly hard as nails with an acute business brain, Derek was also in part Mr Pickwick, a generous and kind host with a sparkle in his eye and a glass waiting to be filled.
The Birmingham business sector can sometimes be a little like stepping gingerly onto the pages of Alice Through the Looking Glass. What you see is not always entirely what you get.
Behind the canapes, the black tie dinners, the handshakes and the business cards, there’s often a parallel universe of simmering egos and power struggles, occasionally quietly raging across the very same organisation or dining table.
Infighting, manipulation and occasional egomania are stock weapons in trade amongst some of the Birmingham elite, and probably everywhere else in the business world for that matter. It’s no great surprise, especially when the stakes are high, the careers lucrative and the rewards considerable for those with an eye out for the main chance.
But Derek Harris, whilst certainly no shrinking violet or corporate wallflower, never played the Big I Am, forever desperate to sit at the top table in the room and address the floor, although his many accomplishments over decades spoke eloquent volumes for his abilities.
His character was rooted in a gritty down to earth common-sense, and he played as hard as he worked, and sometimes harder. You knew there would be laughs when Derek was around.
I first met the man years ago when he invited me to lunch along with Birmingham PR legend (a much overused phrase these days, but applicable in this context) Fred Bromwich in the dining room at Aston Science Park.
As the red wine flowed and the afternoon wore on, I found myself still at the table as the clock ticked towards 5pm. The conversation had criss-crossed around business, the newspaper world, cricket, gossip, Birmingham’s personalities, charities, a vast spectrum.
There was little sign Derek was particularly bothered about limiting either his precious time as a busy city executive or his alcohol intake at that first encounter. It was a portent of things to come.
Derek seemed to relish the company of media types, and the feeling was mutual. He was in his element at the annual cricket match in the sylvan surroundings of Hopwas, near Tamworth, an event generously sponsored for several years by the Science Park.
He would take great care in welcoming every guest as they filed into the clubhouse bar, making sure they were supplied with the necessary well filled glass. The food and hospitality in the marquee were invariably splendid, the speeches kept to a minimum.
Corporate lunches and dinners can be a bit of a hazard of the trade for business journalists, with all the small talk and the false smiles. But with Derek the talk was never small – he was too witty and too human to stand on ceremony for very long – and the smiles were genuine.
I can picture him now, a portly figure seemingly proud of his generous girth, standing in the corner of the sunlit marquee at Hopwas, thanking the assembled party for supporting the annual cricket day, and reminding the drivers to be careful on the way home, with a twinkle in his eye.
Nearing the end of one such occasion, he pushed a full bottle of wine into my hands left over from the lunch proceedings, keen for the party to carry on. Derek was always young at heart,
Unlike certain characters on the West Midlands business circuit, there was nothing remotely starchy or dry about Derek, and I’m not talking alcohol here, although you wouldn’t have necessarily wanted to have crossed him.
There was a calm authority about Derek which commanded respect – he was both substance and style, not always natural bedfellows among some on the corporate circuit.
He enjoyed genially ruling the roost at his press briefings at Aston Science Park, when the food and drink were invariably of the aforementioned Hopwas standard.
There was generally a story or two there for the assembled media to get their teeth into, and the lunches were always held late into the afternoon on a Friday.
As his friend of around 40 years, fellow Birmingham bon viveur John James, said: “Derek was larger than life in every way. I first met him when I was a solicitor acting for a tenant at Aston Science park.
“I was acting against him and I quickly realised that if I was going to get anywhere in life, I knew I needed to be acting for him rather than against him.
“He was a very tough negotiator. He had a very, very good brain, had a very successful business career and did a magnificent job at Aston Science Park.
“But there was much more to Derek than that. He was a very generous host, a great lover of wine. He was known as Del Boy by a lot of his friends and his home in Spain is known as Casa Del.
“I was best man at his fourth wedding and I said it was like Four Weddings and a Funeral. Four weddings for Derek and a funeral for Vanessa. But they had a very strong marriage.
“His death is a great loss to Birmingham.”
RIP Derek Harris, a man taken far too soon. In an increasingly grey, uniform world, the man they called Del Boy stood out as a beacon of colourful, civilized and witty company. A memorial cricket match to mark his passing would be a marvellously apt occasion to raise a glass to one of Birmingham’s finest.
