And after writer and former ice cream man Steve Tillyer told the story of the enterprise on April 3, Warwickshire people called the Courier with their recollections the early days of the firm.

The first Leamington people to taste Mr.Whippy ice cream in the 1950s were not beaming children, but environmental health inspectors.

Kenneth Rapley from Leamington Borough Council was invited to inspect the prototype Mr.Whippy ice cream van in April 1959 to make sure it met food hygiene regulations - and were also the first to sample the new 'soft' ice cream.

According to Mr Rapley, now aged 91, Mr.Whippy's founder Dominic Facchino needed have no concerns.

He said: "The van was first class actually. It passed with flying colours - and the ice cream was excellent."

Mr Facchino owned the national business, but the first man to put Mr.Whippy vans on the streets of Leamington was Peter Lloyd, now 85.

The then Kenilworth butcher had branched out into ice cream in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade owned a fleet of vans.

But when he saw a demonstration of Dominic Facchino's prototype Mr.Whippy van in the Parade, he knew he had to change to survive.

He said: "I told my wife I had just spent £6,000 on an ice cream van and she said I must be mad.

"But if I hadn't he would have wiped me off the face of the planet.

"The kids used to follow us down the street. If there was an ordinary ice cream van in the same street they would leave that one and come to us."

One of Mr Lloyd's ice cream men was David Caswell, whose son, also called David, helped his father on summer days in the early 1960s.

He would wind up the clockwork Greensleeves chimes on his father's van, and also remembers hard work shifting boxes of cones and ice lollies.

The van was almost a company car, and his father would drive it from his house in Weston-under-Wetherley to the Mr.Whippy depot in Althorpe Street before heading down to his round in Banbury.

Being the son of an ice cream man might make you the envy of your schoolfriends, but an endless supply of the soft stuff was too much for Mr Caswell.

He said: "You used to get rather fed up with it after a while."

Anyone able to help Steve Tillyer with his research into Mr.Whippy should call 01780 450328.