Grief for daughter spurs Scots millionaire

Edward Douglas-Miller, whose family owned the world-famous Jenners store in Edinburgh for more than a century, will appear on screen next week as part of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire series.

The Fettes-educated businessman, who now runs a highly-successful recycling firm, spent eight days on a council estate in Norwich for the programme, in which millionaires take on secret identities in rundown communities across Britain, before giving away some of their money to deserving causes.

During the programme he confronts his feelings for his daughter Annabel, who died several years ago just a few days after she was born. While filming, he meets a woman who runs a charity that helps parents who have lost children at birth to come to terms with their loss and also provides financial assistance to give them a proper memorial. He says the experience has had a profound effect on him and guided his thinking.

“We lost our daughter Annabel and it’s a very traumatic thing,” he said. “You can’t explain it, it’s not something you can put any words to.

“Karen, who ran this charity, was an amazing person, and she really helped parents come to terms with their loss and help them see through the dark gloomy space in your head. Annabel was there with me.

“There were a few occasions where I was going to go on a different path. She felt very close and I really felt she helped me.”

Douglas-Miller’s father, Robbie, was managing director of Jenners, on Princes Street, from 1965 until 1990, and his brothers Andrew and Robbie sold the business to House of Fraser in 2005 for £46.1 million,

He said he agreed to appear on the programme because of the good it could do. “I realised I was going to go on an incredible journey and find out a lot about myself, and hopefully good things would come out of it and I would be able to help other people,” he said. “It was actually a very tough experience.”

Douglas-Miller also revealed that he encouraged other family members to get involved following his experiences on the Channel 4 show after he met a man with Motor Neurone Disease who had nursed his brother and mother through the same illness.

“I met him after they both died and he was a very positive person, but at the back of your mind you’re trying to register the horror of what something like that must be like. He wanted to give back to the Motor Neurone Disease Association and wanted to run the Great North Run. After filming I told my mum I was thinking of doing it with him, and my mother, who is 70, said, ‘I’ll do it with you.’ ”

Both Douglas-Miller and his mother Judy completed the race earlier this year, raising thousands of pounds for the MND association.

Douglas-Miller, who unlike his two brothers, who both served as chairman and managing director at different times, never had an official role at Jenners, said he spent much of his childhood at the department store. “It was a fantastic place to get work experience when I was growing up,” he said. “I was interacting with people who believed in a family business and a department store. There were great people there who really believed in my father and in working for a family business and the care and attention he put into it. The whole department store was in our blood, and along with that came the responsibility and the accountability of making it run properly.”

The family had owned the department store since 1881. He added: “It’s very sad when a family business is sold on, but it was the right move at the right time.”

Douglas-Miller started his firm, Remarkable, in 1996, recycling plastic cups and turning them into pencils. The company, based in Worcester, now turns over more than £3.5 million a year, recycling materials and transforming them into office supplies – for example turning car tyres into mousepads and erasers.

Although he now lives in England with his wife and two daughters, he said: “I miss being in Scotland. I come back as much as I can and I hope one day to move home.”