THEY call it the worst job in British business, running a hole in the ground that’s £6 billion in debt, in hock to hundreds of banks, dependent on the goodwill of politicians, besieged by angry shareholders. And the only light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train about to flatten you (sadly for you, there are not enough of those, either).

Welcome to Eurotunnel.

“There are certainly no quick fixes,” concedes Richard Shirrefs, the accountant-turned-manager who took on the Eurotunnel top slot two years ago. Since then, his company’s position has grown steadily worse. Last week he went public with what most in the transport industry already knew: if the Channel tunnel operator didn’t have its debt restructured yet again, it would fail to meet its interest payments beyond the end of next year.

And so the problems keep mounting up. Freight and passenger use of the tunnel is still less than half of what was originally projected. In France — Eurotunnel is an Anglo-French business — shareholders want Shirrefs out. In Britain, the train operator Eurostar, a completely separate business from Eurotunnel, is desperate to have its tunnel-access fees reduced so it can offer cheaper fares, drive up business and run more trains. Yet if Eurotunnel cuts fees to increase use, its income will nosedive further and the banks will go short. Catch 22.

“The lending syndicates have a veto over changes in the contract and will not allow it. It’s not in their interests,” says Shirrefs.

He runs through it all doggedly, somewhat wearily, like a boxer who knows he’s got a pasting coming but reckons he can hang on until the bell. What really annoys him, he adds, is that without the debt repayments, Eurotunnel would be overseeing a profitable business, operating its car-shuttle service and setting tunnel-access fees at a sensible level to stimulate maximum demand.

But the decision to build the tunnel with private-sector cash, which has to be recouped, has been a millstone round Eurotunnel’s neck that it can’t shake off. Last year’s underlying operating profit of £170m, already dented by declining demand, was obliterated by £318m of interest payments on debt. So Shirrefs wants another financial restructuring, plus extra resources poured into developing regional traffic either side of the Channel. And he wants to launch his own international freight service, because French and British rail operators have (literally) failed to come up with the goods.

Nobody can accuse Shirrefs (Scottish by distant roots, Midlander by birth) of lacking fight. Tall, spiky and terse by nature, he’s as sharp and grey as a chip of flint, alternating his long, considered answers with the occasional bout of dismissive aggression. Eurotunnel tends to breed its bosses like that — think back to Sir Alastair Morton, the pugnacious, South African-born chairman who first lured Shirrefs in.

Others, of course, believe that the company has been financially and strategically mismanaged — “terrible communicators, commercial strategy all over the place” sums up one — and now needs a fresh approach. Less of the construction-project machismo, more service-company sensitivity.

French shareholders in particular feel strongly that Eurotunnel’s senior team has to be held to account. At the company’s annual meeting in April, a sizeable number will ask for the board, including 48-year-old Shirrefs, to be replaced.

No wonder he’s edgy. Sitting in a meeting room at his London PR firm, adviser in the corner, black leather bag beside him — he works continually on the hoof, with offices in Folkestone, Calais, London and Paris — he dodges personal questions with the caution of one who knows that every response could be used against him.

Ask Shirrefs what it was like, the elder son of a civil engineer, growing up in Leicester, and he waves it away, “sleepy little town, haven’t been back in years”. Ask him why he became an accountant, when he wanted to be a doctor, and he glowers, “screwed up my A- levels”. And he agonises over disclosing his holiday homes, his salary, his hobbies and his living arrangements.

Divorced, he now lives with his girlfriend in Canterbury. “Call it ‘living in sin’. She does,” he says, raising an eyebrow. Under less pressure, Shirrefs, you suspect, could be rather good company.