When Annie Walker won a Perfect Landlady competition in 1969 with a trip to Majorca as the prize, Jack refused to go because of a fear of flying. Annie went, reluctantly, with Ena Sharples, and there met old brewery friend Douglas Cresswell who asked the Walkers to move permanently to the island and run a bar there. There was a problem however as Ena misinterpreted Douglas and Annie’s relationship and word leaked back to Jack that his wife had found a “gentleman friend”. Annie soon put Jack right and the Walkers accepted the offer. All were satisfied until Newton & Ridley Chairman Sir Hubert Ridley read a memo about the plan. Having already torn a strip off Douglas earlier in the day for buying land in Sardinia to build another bar, he informed his middle-aged “junior” that the Walkers were too old for the intended Majorcan establishment as he had in mind someone aged between thirty and thirty-five. When Douglas tried to convince Sir Hubert of the suitability of the Walkers, he was curtly told to lose his irritating habit of arguing. Douglas summoned the Walkers and told them that the plan did not have board approval and the fault was entirely his as he shouldn’t have made the offer without such approval.
The Walkers were sanguine about their loss and a solid and respectful friendship began between Annie and Douglas. This reached fruition in December 1975 when up-and-coming Tenant’s Executive Warren Coates formulated a plan to oust the by-then widowed Annie from the Rovers following a robbery there and the revelation that she was living alone on the premises. A timely phone call to Douglas resulted in Coates being curtly told to drop his plan. A few months later Douglas took a long holiday in the Caribbean sun on doctor's orders and his son and successor in the firm, Richard, made Fred Gee potman in the pub with specific instructions to watch over Annie, Richard making it clear the very high regard his father felt for the landlady.
- Douglas didn't appear in 1975, his intervention in the matter of Annie being forced to leave the pub being handled by phone.