MICHAEL ADAMSON, a big man with a huge heart for hospitality, has died after a long illness. He was 74. “I get paid to have a good time,” he’d insist.

We’d first met 40 years ago this week when the Ramside Estates group was a week from opening the Hardwick Hall Hotel, at Sedgefield, where he was manager.

He became chairman and managing director of the group, was awarded the MBE in 2004 for services to hospitality and tourism in the North- East. Even then, he insisted he was just an oldfashioned publican.

“It’s simply about being with people, about knowing people, giving back to people,” he said.

Though born in Crewe, his parents were Irish.

“One was Roman Catholic, one Protestant,”

recalls son John. “It was frowned upon at the time, so they came to England.”

Mike did national service in the Catering Corps, attended catering college in Blackpool, decided against management – “They’d give you a nice jacket and a carnation but only about a fiver a week” – in favour of being a chef.

He moved to Durham when his father joined the National Savings department, was in the Garden House pub when he met Dick Coleman, then chairman of the Ramside Group.

Dick mentioned that he’d lost two chefs at the Ramside Hall Hotel in Durham and had two weddings that weekend. Mike offered to help, rather liked the look of the hotel receptionist – “the dolly bird behind the desk” says John – and later married her. She was Marian Coleman, the boss’s daughter.

He and Marian ran the Foxhunters, in Whitley Bay, for five years until Dick, then on a heart machine in Dryburn Hospital, asked him to take a look at Hardwick Hall.

It was bought for £21,500 and, under Mike’s guidance, became one of the region’s top hotels.

He appeared ubiquitous, might walk into any crowded room and remember half of them by name – a rare skill inherited by his son – paid usually and beamed almost permanently.

Though he became the top man, he remained just as familiar in the group’s bars and restaurants, drinking and occasionally plant potting – that’s another story – with the clientele.

“He was a giant of a man in every sense but also a very humble man, drove the same car for 17 years,” recalls John, himself now group managing director.

“Whatever he did throughout his life, he insisted on value for money.”

Mike is survived by Marian and by his children, John and Helen.

His funeral is at 12.30pm next Monday at St John’s Church, Neville’s Cross.