Young's chairman dies after long illness

John Young, who died this week (Sunday 17 September 2006) after a long and courageous battle against cancer, was, at 85, by far the oldest and longest serving chairman in the British brewing industry.

Mr John, as he was known at the family-controlled brewery, Young's of Wandsworth, south London, was the great-great-grandson of Charles Allen Young, one of two businessmen who took over the 16th-century Ram Brewery in 1831.

John joined the company in 1954 after distinguished war service as a fighter pilot with the Fleet Air Arm and a spell in merchant shipping.

Father​He became chairman of the brewery in 1962, when his father, William Allen Young, retired, and quickly became known for his innovative, if sometimes eccentric, approach to business.

The company's annual meetings became lavish and legendary events with the chairman wearing such trappings as boxing gloves or a beekeeper's hat to emphasise a specific point, though the events were scaled down in recent years.

John Young, a firm believer in employee participation in the business, put into effect his father's idea of establishing one of the country's first profit-sharing trusts.

He displayed a visionary instinct in pioneering family-friendly pubs by opening up children's rooms at a time when young people were generally unwelcome in licensed premises.

Four-pint cans​He also set up a Beer Squad to deliver Young's ales to people's homes and introduced the first four-pint cans in the industry.

But his most successful brainwave was a decision, against all contemporary trends and advice, to promote traditional draught beer instead of the keg beers that most brewers were heavily supporting in the 1960s.

The ploy paid off and Young's sales rocketed well before the foundation of the Campaign for Real Ale in 1971.

John Allen Young was born at Winchester on 7 August 1921, the eldest of four sons of William Allen Young and Joan Barrow Simonds, a member of the family that owned the Simonds brewery in Reading, which eventually became part of Courage.

Cambridge degree​He was educated at the Nautical College, Pangbourne, Berkshire, and - either side of the war - at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an honours degree in economics.

In the war, he flew fighter planes from aircraft carriers in Operation Pedestal at the relief of Malta, and later during the North Africa landings and in the Far East.

He was mentioned in despatches, as commanding officer of 888 Squadron, after the surrender of the Japanese in Singapore.

He left the Fleet Air Arm as a lieutenant commander in 1947 and started a career in shipping with the Runciman and Moor lines, which led him to meeting his Belgian wife, Yvonne Lieutenant, while he was based in Antwerp.

Married​They married in 1951 and spent fifty-one loving and happy years together.

They moved to England shortly after their marriage, first to Newcastle upon Tyne and finally to Wisborough Green in West Sussex after John and his brothers had been summoned to work at the brewery.

Besides his service to the brewing industry, John Young was a tireless worker for charities, most notably, from 1972, as a member of the board of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases (later the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery) in Bloomsbury.

He became chairman of the governors at the hospital in 1982 and was later chairman of its development foundation, which raised millions of pounds to build new wards and to buy state-of-the-art equipment.

Diana Princess of Wales​He worked closely with the hospital's first patron, Diana, Princess of Wales, until her death in 1997.

Among many other charitable roles, he was also a governor of the National Society for Epilepsy, of which Princess Diana was a staunch supporter.

Mr John's royal connections extended to the Queen, who visited Young's when the company celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1981, and the Queen Mother, who famously pulled a pint of Young's Special and drank most of it, in a Young's pub six years later and visited the brewery only months before she died in 2002.

The Prince of Wales and the Earl of Wessex emulated their grandmother by drawing beer in Young's houses.

John Young was in constant contact with the Royal Mews through a shared love and employment of horses.

CBE in 1975​He was created CBE in 1975 in recognition of his work both in brewing and for charity. He became a freeman of the City of London in 1986 and, in 1992, he was made an honorary freeman of Wandsworth for "long and outstanding service" to the borough, particularly for "his most generous and unequalled support for charitable causes and voluntary organisations in Wandsworth and the constant interest which he maintains and actively demonstrates in all aspects of the local community".

He was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, a keen musician, sailor and swimmer, and a champion of heavy horses, employing at one time 24 black Shires in the Victorian stables at the brewery, which still house ten horses for daily deliveries to local pubs.

Shire horse​He was president of the Shire Horse Society from 1963 to 1964, of the London Harness Horse Parade Society from 1957 to 1968, and of the Greater London Horse Show from 1972 to 1974. He was once credited with saving the Shire as a breed of horse, and lived to see six of Young's Shires pulling the Lord Mayor's coach on its annual procession through the streets of the City of London every year from 1998.

In recent years, he had been much concerned by the unpalatable fact that the Ram Brewery, which is the oldest in Britain, was woefully inefficient and holding back the company's overall profitability.

After a lengthy feasibility study, begun in 1993, it was announced in May this year that the site was to be sold for redevelopment and that brewing would be transferred to a new company in Bedford owned jointly by Young's and Charles Wells, the Bedford brewers.

He had insisted throughout that when it came to the crunch, his head would rule his heart, but his support for the closure of a brewery that had been in production on the same site since 1581 was tinged with great sadness. Wandsworth​Poignantly, his death comes in the week when Young's beers are being brewed for the last time at Wandsworth, though Young's will continue as an independent public limited company, running more than 220 pubs in the south of England.

John Young worked way beyond any normal person's expectation of retirement and continued until a year or so ago to play a hands-on role in the day-to-day running of the company.

His style was a charismatic mixture of autocracy and benevolence.

Even in his old age, his brain was razor sharp and he had a forensic eye and ear for detail.

Generosity​His generosity was unparalleled.

He made large donations to deserving causes and was the saviour of many an employee or friend down on his luck. He sent out, or personally delivered in the case of Young's publicans, more than two thousand Christmas cards every year and would never forget the birthday of loyal employees and, in many cases, their children.

He was bilingual in English and French, which was the language he always spoke to his wife and, when they were younger, his children.

He was also ambidextrous and wrote almost all of his business and personal letters with a black felt-tip pen, usually with his left hand but at times with his right. His eyesight was such that he could read without glasses well into his eighties.

His last appearance in public, when he insisted on chairing the company's annual general meeting in July, barely two months before he died, was an occasion of heroic proportions.

Rostrum​He stood, unsteadily and clearly frail, at the rostrum to defend his board's decision to sell the brewery site but had to be helped into a chair to field questions from the floor.|||