SIR Alastair Morton, the charismatic driver of the Channel Tunnel project who has died at the age of 66, was a good friend of Kent.

He was a controversial chief executive of Eurotunnel with a combative personality. But it was that style that helped him overcome some of his biggest difficulties.

Without his persistence - some called it bullying - it is doubtful whether the project would have happened at all.

He fought constant battles with construction companies in the TransManche Link (TML) consortium.

Constantly besieged by sceptical journalists pursuing more stories about the project’s financial woes, he defused their hostility with a mix of wit and blunt-speaking.

But there was no escaping the £9bn debt mountain that hampered Sir Alastair’s claim to total success. His financial forecasts proved over-optimistic.

The opening of the Channel Tunnel, by the Queen and French president Francois Mitterand, was a great day for Sir Alastair, the culmination of years of 70-hour days.

But it did not signal the end of strife. There was repeated talk of crisis as he tried to keep some angry bankers on side when they feared they would never get their money back.

He was a supreme exponent of private enterprise whose time came when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. But he was a fierce critic of her failure to sanction a Channel Tunnel Rail Link on the Kent side of the Channel.

He admired the French love of “le grand projet” and their investment in the high-speed TGV rail network across France, including the link between Paris and the Channel Tunnel.

He was clearly delighted last year when Prime Minister Tony Blair opened the first section of CTRL - the 46-mile stretch between Cheriton and Fawkham Junction - at Waterloo International.

But he remained characteristically critical of delays in sorting out a domestic service to benefit passengers in Kent. “I would have thought they would have been a lot further forward than they are,” he said. “They’ve had plenty of time to think about it.”

Sir Alastair played a key part in the regeneration of East Kent as the first chairman of the East Kent Initiative, based in Dover.

Its efforts, and his lobbying in the corridors of Whitehall, sometimes against the wishes of local politicians who wanted to play down East Kent’s economic problems, helped Thanet, Dover, Shepway and Swale win assisted area status.

He foresaw the economic benefits of the Tunnel and the rail link to the county, doing his best to impress on county officials and business leaders the importance of capitalising on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

After leaving Eurotunnel, Sir Alastair, a South African, later went on to chair the Strategic Rail Authority, but his time there was neither as happy or successful as it had been at Eurotunnel.

He was less comfortable with Labour ministers and the range of organisations he had to deal with at the SRA, including the politically-sensitive issue of RailTrack. The Government found his plain-speaking less to its taste than someone with a softer spot for the public sector.

He quit in 2001 after failing to establish his authority among the competing bodies.

He accused the industry of “drifting” and the SRA of being “powerless.”

Robert Alastair Newton Morton was born in Johannesburg and educated at Witwatersrand University.

In 1976, he became the first executive to join the British National Oil Corporation. In 1982, he joined the merchant banking group Guinness Peat.

Sir Alastair was knighted in 1991 and, a measure of the respect given him by his French counterparts, a Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur in 1994.