WHEN owners are obliged to prop up businesses year after year with their own cash then Mr Micawber's famous, and too oft-quoted recipe for economic happiness springs to mind.

Ellis Short, Sunderland AFC’s taciturn chairman, took the unusual step of writing a column in Saturday’s match programme to defend himself against accusations of tight-fistedness.

“I have funded significant shortfalls each and every season,” wrote the American investor, in an admission that boosted his credentials as a philanthropist but laid bare the club’s failure to make ends meet.

To paraphrase Dickens: "annual income £72m nineteen and six, annual expenditure £95m ought and six, result - misery."

Without Mr Short’s largesse, and the even larger largesse that comes from the Premier League's pay TV deals, Sunderland fans might well be scouring the pages of the London Gazette rather than The Northern Echo for updates about their club.

A 37 mile drive down the A19 takes you from the Stadium of Light to Steel House – home of another business that relies on generous hand outs from its owner.

SSI UK has produced more than nine million tonnes of steel since production restarted a week after Easter Sunday 2012, but it hasn’t made any brass. The steel firm’s balance sheet displays as much red and white as a Sunderland home shirt and there is no prospect of a move into the black anytime soon.

Before they bought these famous North-East institutions both Mr Short and Bangkok-based SSI had impressive track records for making money. Emotion clearly played a part in their takeover deals – SSI owner Mr Win admitted to being moved by the passion displayed by Teesside’s Save Our Steel campaign, and Ellis Short fell for Niall Quinn’s seductive sales patter, but neither party regarded their investments as charity cases. The long term goal for the Texan and the Thai was always to deliver success and solvency.

Sunderland and SSI have another thing in common that has protected them from collapse. They are both loved by thousands of people who will fight tooth and nail to ensure their survival. These are no ordinary businesses. Sunderland, in spite of playing some dire football over the past three or four seasons (I speak from bitter experience), continue to pull in the sixth highest crowd in England.

Redcar steelworks is arguably the most beloved business in the North-East. The campaign to rescue it from mothballing showed how much the local community cared, but the region’s affection for its last surviving iron and steel plant runs deeper still. SSI owes eye-watering amounts of money to some of its key suppliers. If they really put the squeeze on then the Redcar works would be doomed. But no one wants to be responsible for ending an industry that’s lasted on Teesside more than 140 years.

Business is supposed to be all about hard-headed decisions, but Sunderland and SSI can be grateful that the heart plays a part too.