Morley was a voluble, self-made Cockney with an ability to put people's backs up without consciously trying, and then turn the resultant fracas into publicity. The bureaucrats at Grand Metropolitan Hotels, the conglomerate which took over his Mecca interests and him, tried to bring him into line with its traditional hierarchies, but it was some years before they managed to oust him.
Morley recalled with pride that he had been born in an East End warehouse - or at least to humble parents in Holborn, central London. He was educated at Whitstable grammar school and the royal naval training ship, HMS Exmouth. His father died when he was two and, before he was 12, his mother and stepfather had also died. On Exmouth, he distinguished himself by splitting toffee bars into squares and selling them to fellow trainees. At 14, he became an army boy bandsman, playing the French horn.
Morley claimed later to have been promoted, in the Royal Fusiliers, from private to sergeant in six weeks, and also to have been at Dunkirk. He was undoubtedly in Norway after the war, where he took over - as a lieutenant - when the sports and entertainment officer went sick.
Demobbed in 1946 as Captain Morley, Royal Army Service Corps (Motor Boats), he remembered himself as an acting major. He took charge of publicity at Mecca, then run by Carl Heimann and Alan Fairley. With the BBC, he started Come Dancing in 1949, as a welcome relief from the dowdiness and austerity of the war years.
When he heard that the 1951 Festival of Britain was to feature a beauty contest, Morley saw himself as the ideal man to handle the publicity. He then assumed responsibility for the whole event.
By the following year, he was general manager of Mecca's dancing division, the year after that he was a director, and, in 1954, he joined the board of the parent company, Mecca Ltd. In 1960, he married Julia Rogers, a former model he had met at Mecca's Leeds dancehall and who was to become his righthand woman in running Miss World.
By 1962, Morley was Mecca's joint assistant managing director and, in 1969, he became managing director and a director of Grand Metropolitan Hotels, which took over Mecca the following year. He became joint chairman and managing director of Mecca and, in 1971, sole chairman and managing director.
The number of these "joint" appointments suggested that the view of him as a usefully berserk NCO had adherents within Mecca and Grand Metropolitan; while the appointments of extremely short duration suggested that he did not suffer equals gladly.
B ut Maxwell Joseph, head of Grand Metropolitan - and himself a quiet operator - nevertheless recognised Morley's value sufficiently to allow him to report to him directly, bypassing two accountant deputies. At one stage, he controlled 100 dancehalls and 700 betting shops.
Morley had little respect for accountants, who he saw as incapable of creative leadership in the entertainment field. But he did not bother to disguise that lack of respect, which was his fatal mistake. The staff bonus scheme he devised was certainly not accountant-led, but was understandably popular with the rank and file, as was he. In the early 1970s, his own bonus was put at £100,000, though it was reported that he had waived it.
It was perhaps his uneasiness within the bureaucracy that led him to seek fresh fields. He stood as Conservative candidate for Dulwich in 1974, although Labour's Sam Silkin saw him off, as he did again in 1979. Nonetheless, Morley's Who's Who entry, presumably self-written, declared that he "reduced the majority of the then attorney-general from 7,500 to 122". The national swing may also have had something to do with it.
By 1978, the pressure to unseat him at Mecca and Grand Metropolitan had become explosive. Morley resigned from the Mecca chairmanship and the Grand Metropolitan board with a £200,000 handshake, and the promise that he could run Miss World for another five years. When Grand Met pulled the plug on the BBC's use of Mecca ballrooms for Come Dancing, Morley's wife said it was only because it was her husband who was running it.
The beauty contest was rather more lucky. The 1970 Miss World, compered by Bob Hope at the Royal Albert hall, coincided with the birth of the women's liberation movement, and became the target of feminist protest and flour-bomb attacks. It was a public relations disaster which focused public unease about the event. Yet despite demonstrations and scandals, Miss World tottered on, even when, in 1980, the BBC decided to leave her to the embrace of more commercial arms.
That Who's Who entry emphasised Morley's charitable work - with his wife, he raised more than £100m. It revelled in the size of the Miss World television audience (more than 1.5bn in 115 countries in 1995) and in his introduction of commercial bingo to Britain in 1961. It did not mention his age, any more than his sleek hair was ever allowed to go grey.
Determined, self-hyping, slightly innocent, Morley was a maverick. Julia and four sons survive him. His daughter predeceased him.
Eric Morley, entrepreneur, born October 7 1918; died November 9 2000