Former BBC economics correspondent Dominick Harrod dies aged 72

BBC stalwart of the 1970s and 1980s Dominick Harrod has died aged 71.

Harris served more than 20 years with the BBC, during which time his expertise earned him interviews with every serving Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Telegraph reports.

Born in 1941, Harrod was the son of John Maynard Keynes biographer and economist Sir Roy Harrod. After reading PPE at Oxford University, he secured a job with the Sunday Telegraph writing for their ‘Albany’ gossip column under Kenneth Rose. He was Washington Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph from 1966 to 1969, and on his return to London served as the newspaper’s economics correspondent.

After joining the BBC in 1971, he spent 21 years at the organisation as BBC Television’s economics correspondent, then economics editor on BBC Radio in the 1980s. According to the Times, Harrod's unflappable and optimistic delivery earned him a parody of his economic explanations in Private Eye under the byline "Dominick Horrid".

In 1993, Harrod became a victim of the management changes enacted at the BBC under Director General John Birt, and was made redundant. After one year as city editor of the Yorkshire Post, Harrod became programme director at St George’s House at Windsor Castle, founded by the Duke of Edinburgh as a place where people of influence meet to discuss matters of national interest under “Chatham House rules”, before he retired in 1998.