Dominick Harrod, formerly the BBC's Economics Correspondent, has died.  He had recently suffered a fall near his home in Norfolk.  More to follow.

There are obits about Dom in yesterday's Daily Telegraph (where he worked before joining the BBC) and Today's Times. I gather his brother Harry has been asked to do one for the Independent.
His funeral will be in Norfolk and I will post the date and time etc. once I get it,
There may be a memorial service in London later.
Dom was a particular friend of mine. When Mark Tully launched an attack on John Birt's rule in 1993, Dom invited myself and Peter Smith for lunch at the Garrick to celebrate. We called these Tully lunches which went on every two months or so with Peter paying and then myself for the next 20 years. I discovered he was in hospital when I rang his Blakeney home to remind him that he was dining with us at the Loch Fyne in Covent Garden in a few days time. Unhappily that and much more are over............

This is The Times obituary:

Dominick Harrod
Published at 12:01AM, August 7 2013
Unflappable journalist and broadcaster with a gift for explaining the mysteries of finance and economics

For three decades from the 1960s, Dominick Harrod kept up a shrewd running commentary on the economic life of the nation and of the world through his newspaper columns and broadcasts. As BBC Economics Correspondent, above all, he was admired for his ability to explain the complex and often tumultuous world of finance and economics in a way that could be understood by a general audience.

On television, his bank manager-like appearance seemed to gel with his subject matter. His two books: Politics of Economics (1978) andMaking Sense of the Economy (1983) confirmed his standing and illustrated his impressive network of political contacts. He interviewed every Prime Minister and Chancellor from Harold Wilson onwards. When meeting John Major shortly after he became Prime Minister, he remarked, “Every time I see you, you have a new job,” to which Major shot back, “Well stay away from me then.”

Irreverent and far from stuffy, Harrod nonetheless enjoyed a privileged, Establishment background. He was the son of Sir Roy Harrod, the renowned economist and author of both International Economics, a standard textbook of the times, and a biography of his friend, John Maynard Keynes. Dominick’s mother, Wilhelmine Harrod, née Cresswell, known as Billa, was an indomitable architectural conservationist from an old Norfolk family who was briefly engaged to Sir John Betjeman, but who was put off, it is said, by his “green teeth”.

Dominick Roy Harrod was born in Oxford in 1940 where his father held a studentship (that is, fellowship) in modern history and economics at Christ Church. After an education at the Dragon School and then at Westminster, Harrod returned to Oxford to follow in his father’s footsteps, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church. He attributed his subsequent third-class degree to spending too much time coxing for his college rowing crew. Defeating the hearty rowers of St Edmund Hall in a “bumping” race remained a cherished memory.

After Oxford, at the age of 22 he joined The Sunday Telegraph where he remained for four years, first working on the Albany political gossip column under Kenneth Rose before moving to the City desk. In 1966 he moved to The Daily Telegraph as its Washington Correspondent where he joined a brilliant stable of British journalists including Henry Brandon, Charles Wheeler and Anthony Howard. He was once hit by a police baton while covering the riot at the Democratic Convention Centre in Chicago in 1968. After three years, he returned to London as the Telegraph’s Economics Correspondent.

The lure of broadcasting took him to the BBC in 1971, as Economics Correspondent, working in both radio and television. He had the ability to remain cool under pressure. One of his career highpoints was his imperturbable coverage of the financial crisis of 1976 when the then Chancellor, Denis Healey, sought a loan from the International Monetary Fund thereby submitting the economy to IMF supervision. As the markets erupted, Harrod’s was the cool voice, ever optimistic, keeping events in perspective. Private Eyewould feature a regular parody of his economics explanations under the byline “Dominick Horrid”.

Harrod’s career had nearly come to an abrupt end a year earlier when, on October 23, 1975, an IRA car bomb exploded outside the family home in Campden Hill Square minutes after he had left for the school run. The target was the MP Sir Hugh Fraser who lived next door. The front of the Harrods’ house was gutted and a passer-by, the cancer researcher Professor Gordon Hamilton Fairley, was killed.

Harrod returned to the BBC as Economics Editor, Radio, after a brief, unsuccessful spell as director of information at Dunlop. He became a regular feature on the Today programme and was in his element each Budget day explaining fiscal measures on The Jimmy Young Show on Radio 2. So successful was his on-air partnershiwith Young that he was invited back to cover Budgets after the BBC made him redundant in 1993. He spent a year as City editor of theYorkshire Post and three years from 1994 organising and chairing conferences at St George’s House, a foundation based at Windsor Castle and established by the Duke of Edinburgh to promote leadership.

Harrod was kind, mischievous, generous with his time and very sociable and garrulous by nature. He was a stalwart of the Garrick Club, part of the circle once centred on the club’s chief curmudgeon, Kingsley Amis. Harrod found the Garrick a great solace after the death of his wife, the author Christina Hobhouse, from meningitis in 1996, and later, in 2005, the death of his mother to whom he was also devoted. The club became virtually a second home, where he could satisfy his need for company, indulge his fondness for Scotch, and draw on past glories in what could seem an almost bottomless fund of anecdotes. Latterly he had become somewhat frail.

When not in London Harrod was at the family home in Blakeney, Norfolk. Like his mother, he was active there in architectural conservation. He was a founder member of the Norfolk Churches Trust and chair of the Friends of Morston Church. He was at his happiest reading the lesson in church. Living by the sea, he enjoyed sailing his dinghy. A distant relative, the explorer Samuel Gurney Cresswell, had been the first to traverse the North-West passage. Harrod acquired letters and journals from his mother and edited them for a book, War, Ice and Piracy: The Remarkable Career of a Victorian Sailor.

His son and two stepsons survive him.

Dominick Harrod, broadcaster and journalist, was born on August 21, 1940. He died after a fall on August 4, 2013, aged 72

This is from "Ariel" dated 15th August.

Ex-BBC journalist Alan Ashton recalls working with the former BBC economics correspondent.

Dominick Harrod, the BBC's economics correspondent/editor for more than 20 years, died in hospital in Norwich, never recovering from a fall near his country home in Blakeney. He was 72.

He joined the BBC in 1971 from the Daily Telegraph where he spent three years as Washington correspondent.

His record with the BBC is impressive, interviewing every ruling prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer and covering 15 economic summits around the world.

He came into his own on Budget Day explaining the proposals live, not on the Radio 4 special, but to Jimmy Young's listeners on Radio 2. He was so popular and professional, the programme continued to employ him after he left the corporation in 1993. As a senior radio newsroom editor put it: "He was a correspondent with truly expert insights."

His BBC career originally covered both radio and television, but a TV editor decided he wasn't photogenic, so his later years were all on the radio.

Nothing too menial.
Although regarded as a "toff" - his background and ancestry has been well covered in national press obituaries - he got on well with colleagues and kept in touch with many of us.

He had a rather undeserved reputation for meanness, which was not borne out by the lavish lunches he gave at the Garrick Club, which became his second home after the sudden tragic death of his wife, Christina, in 1995. Several of us lunched with him there and elsewhere over the past 20 years.

After he left the corporation, he spent a year as city editor of the Yorkshire Post and three years organising conferences for a foundation based at Windsor Castle, established by the Duke of Edinburgh to promote leadership.

I introduced him to Sir Mervyn King at Lord's last cricket season where the pair engaged in animated conversation in the pavilion and committee dining room. Whether it was about cricket (doubtful), finance, economics or politics, we will never know.

A memory of Dominick, for which I am especially grateful, occurred at the Ottawa summit in 1981. Local technicians were on strike, but an executive of the Canadian broadcasters, trained as an studio manager, volunteered to put the Today programme on air, fronted by the late John Timpson.

I was producer/editor and Dom came along every evening their time to take part in the programme, but probably more importantly, to act as a "goffer" - fetching running orders and more from machines several corridors away and brewing coffee.

He never hesitated or questioned those menial tasks and was rewarded with his - and Timpson's - favourite tipple - Scotch at the end of each programme, particularly the final night! That was not regarded as particularly daring or unusual in those days at the BBC.


Alan "Badger" Ashton worked as a senior radio journalist in the BBC from 1963 until 1992, including for GNS, Newsbeat and the Today programme.