KEY POINTS:
It's remarkable how many times the moniker "Sir" Douglas Myers appears, even though this New Zealand captain of industry was never knighted. Nor has Myers been made a member of the Order of New Zealand, the country's highest honour, which is designed to recognise outstanding service to the
Crown and people of New Zealand in a civilian or military capacity.
Sir James Fletcher and Fred Turnovsky are the only businessmen among the 48 who have been appointed to the order. Sir Roy McKenzie is there for his philanthropic endeavours.
But despite the fact that Myers has not been publicly recognised, journalists frequently accord him a Sir. Put it down to journalistic sloppiness if you must and Myers, a brutally honest critic of New Zealand journalism, would have no hesitation in doing so.
But I prefer to think the reason we so often write the "Sir" in front of Douglas is because deep down, if unconsciously, we would simply have expected a businessman with Myers' track record to have been honoured during the time knighthoods were still current.
The Myers, a family biography which has just been published, gives an intriguing insight into the influence his brilliant family has had on New Zealand's public and commercial life over three generations.
Myers commissioned the work, but its historian authors, Paul Goldsmith and Michael Bassett, have not produced a vanity biography.
The warts are all listed and accounted for: the buyout Myers and his father, Sir Kenneth, orchestrated to get control of the family firm, Campbell & Ehrenfried, which the Court of Appeal later ruled involved fraudulent misrepresentation; the clashes with the Wellington establishment to get control of Lion; the various family members' love affairs, rumoured or fact; the Jewish lineage which appears to condition Myers' occasional paranoia about being seen to be too big in New Zealand; and the effect of being the only son in a family ruled by dominant women.
These are the human elements that will inform readers who only know Myers from his public image. But the elements that demand public recognition are these: Myers dared to lead New Zealand business in new directions when other 1980s/1990s businessmen merely followed.
Even though he was at times a member of Sir Roger Douglas' kitchen Cabinet, he cannot be accused of cronyism. While his business cohorts were lining up to pluck the low-hanging fruit from the privatisation of state-owned assets, he was taking Lion Nathan into Australia, and - importantly - succeeding in the tougher Australian environment. His foray into China was less successful.
But the commercial courage by taking his NZ brewing company outside our borders helped to build confidence in us as a small nation stuck at the bottom of the South Pacific - that we could take on the world.
With time we forget how Myers, in much the same manner of his forefathers, successfully challenged current nostrums.
And how much we were cheered on and galvanised into lifting our dreams and ambitions by the successes of Sir Peter Blake in the Whitbread Cup and his later win of the America's Cup, two events that would not have happened without Myers' faith in Blake and Lion Nathan's bankrolling.
He was in at the formation of the NZ Business Roundtable. And did not shirk from promoting unpopular policies when others pulled their heads in out of fear of Government retaliation.
But successive governments to their shame cannot bring themselves to put this outstanding New Zealander on the pedestal he clearly deserves.
I'm not really sure what's driving this. Is it his outspokenness? The combative manner in which he at times assails our pretensions and pricks the bubble of our growing complacency as a nation? Or that his obvious manliness runs counter to the ruling femocracy?
Myers did after all put the balls back on the Lion emblem once he gained control of the company.
We all know about his on-off love affair with New Zealand.
The depression that he sometimes exhibits - perhaps too publicly for his own good - in our rather insular country. The tortures he put himself through when Helen Clark became prime minister and Labour closed the access door to those who were strongly affiliated with the Business Roundtable.
He felt like a jilted lover. But that was then and this is now. Myers is feeling the intimations of mortality that we all must.
His family biography is part of the legacy he has set up for his children. But his legacy is also a public one. The honours are long overdue.
