Doug Ellis

Sir Herbert Douglas Ellis, OBE (3 January 1924 – 11 October 2018) was an English entrepreneur. He was the chairman of Aston Villa Football Club from 1968 to 1975, and again from 1982 until 2006. Ellis was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours List for charitable services.

While still alive, Villa's longest-serving player Charlie Aitken said of Ellis:

Ellis was born on 3 January 1924 in Hooton, Cheshire. When he was three years old, his father, also named Herbert, died. His mother Jane did not remarry but worked to support him and his younger sister, and paid his fares to attend secondary school in Chester.

According to Ellis, he attended trials for a football career with Tranmere Rovers as a child, but chose to pursue his business career rather than football. During World War II, he was based with the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and the experience of his first trip abroad inspired him to provide low-cost foreign holidays to people of a similar economic background. Before he was 40, he had become a millionaire by pioneering package holidays to Spain, with his company Sunflight.

Ellis met his first wife Audrey Slater in Ceylon in 1946. They had a son together and later divorced. He married his second wife Heidi Kroeger in 1963, with whom he had two sons. He met the German courier in Benidorm when she was working for a rival company, and persuaded her to join his corporation.

Ellis was the chairman and major shareholder of Aston Villa for two separate spells, the first being from 1968 to 1975. Ellis was replaced as chairman and finally ousted from the board in 1979. During his absence, Aston Villa enjoyed its greatest period of success in modern times, winning the Football League title in 1981 and the European Cup in 1982. In June 1982, Ellis ousted Harry Marshall as chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers. At the time, he noted the club was 24 hours from extinction, with debt as high as £2.5m. In November 1982, he was elected to the board of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.

Ellis returned to Aston Villa as chairman in 1982, and remained there until selling to Randy Lerner in 2006. Some fans blame him for the decline of the club after the European Cup victory in 1981–82. Within five years, the club was relegated from the top flight, with many of the European Cup-winning team being sold to other teams, although it can be argued that this was due to large debts built up during the previous regime.

Ellis was nicknamed "Deadly Doug" by football pundit Jimmy Greaves, after sacking numerous managers during his tenures as chairman. Aston Villa had 13 different managers during his two spells. Only two won any trophies for the team – Ron Atkinson and Brian Little with the Football League Cup in 1994 and 1996 respectively.