It is astonishing now to reflect that one of the biggest brands, not just in Britain, but in Europe, had such humble beginnings. “A ROBERTS Family Grocer and Provision Merchant", read the sign on the little Lincolnshire shop. "If you get it from Roberts's . . . you get . . . THE BEST." But in 1927 Grantham's leading grocer changed his slogan to the one we all recognise today. Like most readers, I suspect, I have only to hear the words "The Quality of Our Provisions Stands Supreme", and I immediately picture that annoying TV advert with David Beckham and Myleene Klass. But then we don't call the shop Roberts's any more; we know it as Thatcher's.

The funny thing is that history might have been so different. When Alfred Roberts's daughter left Oxford in 1947, she came very close to being adopted as the Tory candidate for Dartford. But it never happened: the local activists were far too old-fashioned to accept a woman MP. So Margaret Roberts threw herself back into industrial chemistry, working for Lyons and developing a new process to preserve ice cream. With her political ambitions shattered, she realised that here was a chance to make serious money. Back she went to Grantham with her ice cream recipe - and history was made.

For it was in Grantham, where Margaret took over the family business, that she met her future husband, Kenneth Thatcher, a local farmer who was making a mint supplying the milk given out free in schools. The two joined forces, and with Kenneth's growing dairy empire behind her, Margaret was able to expand her ice cream interests. Soon Thatcher's Ices were all the rage, not just in Grantham, but in the rest of Lincolnshire, too - and then neighbouring Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

Then Margaret had a brainwave. Ice cream was not just for children! Why not market it to people who really needed something to refresh them after a hard day's work - the local miners, say? So Thatcher's started distributing cheap ice creams to the local collieries and coking plants; indeed, at one plant outside Sheffield, Orgreave, Margaret herself handed out ices to striking miners on the picket line, who nicknamed her “the Ice Queen".

Nowadays, of course, Thatcher's is one of the world's most familiar brands, thanks to Margaret's pioneering role in breaking into the European market. Almost every town in Britain has a Thatcher's supermarket, and they are now increasingly popular in France. Indeed, the firm is so successful that it even has its own newspaper - the Dairy Mail.

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