01-05-2025
The Earl of Donoughmore, businessman who turned Perdio's hand-held transistor radio into a 1960s hit
The 8th Earl of Donoughmore, who has died aged 97, was a doctor turned businessman who helped develop the Perdio transistor radio into a feature of the Swinging Sixties.
Viscount 'Mick' Suirdale, as he then was, bought a 65 per cent share in the fledgling Perdio company (the name was a contraction of 'personal radio') which had been founded in 1956 by a former RAF pilot, Derek Willmott – who adopted newly available transistor technology rather than the bulkier valves of earlier radios to develop a series of stylish models including the Piccadilly ('The Mightiest Midget of Them All!') and, in 1961, the Pall Mall.
Floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1962, Perdio flourished as hand-held transistors became all the rage, not least for youngsters tuning to emerging pirate pop-music stations; it also launched the Portorama portable television set. But the acquisition of a large new factory at Sunderland, combined with incursions of cheap competition from the Far East, drove the company into loss and, in 1965, voluntary liquidation.
Its assets were in due course acquired by Dansette, a brand best-known for portable record-players, which continued selling Hong Kong-made Perdio radios until the early 1970s. Meanwhile, the fate of the original company gave rise to a leading case in corporate law, Hely-Hutchinson vs Brayhead, which ended in victory for Suirdale.
During a failed rescue takeover of Perdio by a company called Brayhead, the chairman of Brayhead – a Mr Richards, who was in the habit of making financial commitments and telling his board afterwards – had guaranteed repayment of debts and losses to Suirdale. But when Suirdale subsequently sued for the money, Brayhead refused to pay on the grounds that Richards had no authority to offer the guarantees in the first place.
After the High Court found in Suirdale's favour, Brayhead appealed; but in 1968 the Master of the Rolls Lord Denning ruled definitively that because Brayhead's board had allowed Richards to act as he did, 'actual authority' had been established and the commitments stood.
Richard Michael John Hely Hutchinson, always known as Mick or Micky, was born on August 8 1927 into an Anglo-Irish dynasty whose earldom was created in 1800 for Richard Hely-Hutchinson (1756-1825), an Irish parliamentarian and governor of Tipperary.
When Mick was 21, he inherited the courtesy title of Viscount Suirdale as the eldest of two sons (and a daughter) of Col John Hely-Hutchinson, who was briefly MP for Peterborough during the Second World War before succeeding as 7th Earl in 1948. His wife Jean, née Hotham, had been in charge of the Red Cross in the East End of London throughout the war, working with Edwina Mountbatten, and was appointed MBE in 1947.
Both parents were kidnapped by the IRA in June 1974 from Knocklofty, their estate at Clonmel in Ireland, but released five days later in Dublin's Phoenix Park, thanks to an intervention by the Catholic Church.
During the war, Mick had been sent to America and educated at Groton School in Massachusetts, a happy experience. He never forgot the warm welcome he, his siblings and his cousins received in America. His parents, not realising that the North Atlantic was still full of U-boats, brought him back to Britain in 1943 in a convoy that was heavily attacked, with many ships sunk as he stood on the deck of his own – which was not hit.
He finished his education at Winchester, which he loathed, before studying medicine at New College, Oxford. He undertook the clinical phase of his training at St Mary's Paddington and went on to do National Service as a medical officer. After finishing his work with the soldiers in the mornings, he would help impoverished women in childbirth in the afternoons and evenings. Later he became a registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology at Westminster Hospital.
To supplement his doctor's salary, he became increasingly involved in business. Starting in property investment, he switched to full-time involvement in Perdio and later moved first to Belgium and then to Paris, working in consumer goods (including jam and preserves) for the international conglomerate WR Grace & Co before setting up an investment firm with his business partner Warren Heller.
Having inherited the earldom on his father's death in 1981, he moved back to Britain with his first wife Sheila to buy and renovate a manor house at Bampton in Oxfordshire. He sat in the House of Lords (as Viscount Hutchinson in the peerage of the United Kingdom) until hereditary peers were largely excluded in 1999, interesting himself principally in health matters. He also became vice-president of St Luke's Hospital in Oxford.
As chairman of Bampton's parish council, Donoughmore's contributions to the village included raising funds to create the recreation ground and its fine pavilion, and to replace the roof of St Mary's church.
His filly Ruby Tiger (owned in partnership with the jockey-turned-sculptor Philip Blacker and his wife) won the Nassau Stakes at Goodwood as well as races in France, Germany, Canada and the United States, while his gelding Cyrian (owned with his son Tim) won the Northumberland Plate, known as the 'Pitman's Derby'.
A fine fisherman and shot, Mick Donoughmore was admired for his analytical mind as well as his generosity and courtesy. In 1951 he married Sheila, née Parsons, with whom he had four sons, of whom the first, John, Viscount Suirdale, born in 1952, succeeds as 9th Earl.
The second, Tim, became a well-known publisher, setting up his own business Headline Publishing (later Hodder Headline) in 1986 with his father as chairman. The third son Nicholas became a noted Dorset-based artist.
After Sheila's death in 1999, Mick Donoughmore married in 2001 Meg (Margaret) Morgan, née Stonehouse, who survives him with his sons.
Lord Donoughmore, born August 8 1927, died April 25 2025
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