Bernard Matthews is 76, not in sparkling health, and perhaps even more exhausted than the rest of us by tabloid headlines about 'fowl practices' at the business he has spent his life turning into an unimaginable success.
Before Bernard came along with his Norfolk tweeds and 'bootiful' catchphrase, turkeys were only eaten at Christmas. Today he rears 10m of them a year, has put them into the mainstream foodscape in such ingenious forms as Crispy- Crumb Burgers and Frozen Mini- Kievs, and has earned him £300m.
For this, Bernard gets nothing but abuse - as the arch-poisoner of the nation's children, the cruel begetter of Frankenturkeys, and now, the man who brought bird flu to Britain.
Bernard's detractors will have been sorely disappointed by yesterday's announcement that the Matthews plant in Suffolk where |
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MAN IN THE NEWS: Farmer at the centre of the turkey flap, by william langley |
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H5N1 - a strain of avian flu - had been detected, was being cleared to re-open. And that Bernard's admittedly sub-haute cuisine delicacies will not be hauled from supermarket shelves and burned.
Those who know the boss will have been less surprised. For it takes a tough man to rear a tender turkey.
Bernard, the son of a mechanic, was in his mid-teens when he spotted a basket of turkey eggs for sale at a shilling each on a Norfolk market stall.
He bought the lot, found himself a paraffin-powered incubator, and, when 12 turkeys hatched, fattened them up and sold them for £9. By the early 1960s he owned the biggest turkey farm in Europe, and was advising the Soviet Union on the modernisation of its poultry industry.
Jamie Oliver's denunciation of Bernard's Turkey Twizzlers couldn't shut him down, nor, you can bet, will bird flu. 
FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 14, 2007 |
