Robert Breare - Telegraph A profile in The Daily Telegraph observed that "listening to the life and times of Robert Breare is rather like listening to a business version of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones; it's a romping, entertaining tale that would take several hundred pages to do justice to." Three-times married, with four sons, a fanatical lover of sailing, fast cars, good food, fine wines and fat cigars, Breare was a man whose creative hyperactivity led him up to the top of the hill many times, but whose credibility was often holed by disorganisation. When Kate Rankine interviewed him for this newspaper in 2001, she observed in his office "a night bag slung in the corner, with its BA executive gold card attached and a Hermes tie box on top. Papers poke out of a bulging briefcase, while every surface of his very large desk is covered with piles of documents, spreading out onto the floor by his chair. Yet with his hearty laugh and infectious enthusiasms ("I go out and like good dinners, decent wine and drive a Ferrari like the next person") many found Breare extremely likeable. It was somehow typical that the inspiration for his most recent business venture, Snoozebox, should have come to him at a grotty French campsite, where he was staying while attending the 24 Hours race at Le Mans. Needing to go to the lavatory at 3am, as he recalled, "I faced a 20-minute walk, then a 20-minute queue for filthy loos and thought: 'There's got to be a better way."" His idea was to provide pop-up hotels for special events, consisting of stackable converted shipping containers containing bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, air-conditioning, television and free wi-fi. The first 40-room hotel made its debut at the 2012 British Grand Prix, a deal brokered by the racing driver David Coulthard, who became president of the new company. Snoozebox went public in May 2012 - in a £20.5 million float - but in April this year the company announced that Breare had resigned with "immediate effect" as chief executive after leading the firm to a £4.4 million loss due to "uncertainties" with Olympic contracts. Breare was fond of pointing out that "if you have only cost control without creation, you die." But as a former business partner observed in 2000, the reverse was also true. Breare, he noted, was "very good at the battle, but not so good at staying in the trenches." Robert Roddick Ackrill Breare was born at Claro, North Yorkshire, on March 18 1953 and educated at Eton and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read Law . After university he was expected to join R Ackrill, the family-run local newspaper group. "It was always expected that I would work with dad, but when I got into the business, I found he had gone to sleep on the job," he recalled. Robert wanted to expand the business, but his father, who could not bear his son's growing independence, fired his colleagues and reversed his plans. Eventually, following his father's retirement, Robert sold the business to United News & Media, owners of the Yorkshire Post. His father was horrified until he discovered that his son had managed to get £5 million for the business. Breare invested the cash into the Westminster Press newspaper group. Three years later he sold the business to Emap for £18 million. In 1987 he joined Parkdale, a Leeds-based commercial property developer, as its chief executive, and it was not long before his focus turned to hotels, building up a portfolio of properties, golf courses and country clubs. In 1989, having increased the company's profits from £1 million to £8 million, he agreed a takeover of Parkdale by Pavilion Leisure and in 1990 formed Arcadian. All was going well until later that year, when a major recession hit. Breare, who had put a lot of his own money into the enterprise, recalled that in the next three years "I went from a house in Chelsea and a Ferrari Testarossa to a leased apartment in Clapham and a share of an old Golf." But as hotel assets began to stabilise, he came back fighting, and towards the end of the decade had co-founded the Malmaison hotel chain and gone into partnership with Sir Terence Conran to develop the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street Station. After selling the business to Patriot, in 2000 Breare founded Noble House Leisure, a restaurant and pubs group he used as his launch pad for his "bid" for Wolverhampton & Dudley. The following year he was brought in to run the Scotsman Hotels group by its owners, and was subsequently credited with turning the group round. But not everyone was impressed. In 2002 when, amid rumours that Malmaison, the hotel company he had founded, might be up for sale again, Breare expressed an interest, only to be rebuffed by a company spokesman, who observed that "Robert Breare would be the last person we would sell Malmaison to, even if it was for sale." In October 2009 Merchant Inns, a boutique hotel operator that he founded with Sir John Ritblatt, called in the administrators following the sacking of Breare in August that year and the discovery of "unknown" financial liabilities. Breare, who admitted that he was a "difficult man to be married to" was found dead at his home in Ascot by his ex-wife Susie Breare, who had been married to him for 14 years. "Robert was always chasing a dream and, in many ways, was an absolute genius," she was quoted as saying, "but you needed to harness that enthusiasm. She and his four sons survive him. Robert Breare, born March 18 1953, died July 12 2013