Helped by a £100,000 television advertising campaign, Nik Naks from Scunthorpe – introduced in 1982 – soon became one of the nation’s favourite snacks.

By the mid-1980s Sooner Foods, a Rowntree Mackintosh Group Company, was offering these “crunchy sticks of corn” in four flavours – scampi & lemon, nice ‘n’ spicy, real cheese and sweet and sour.

Murphy’s crisps then came in 10 flavours and there were 12 varieties of the Rileys brand.

Other snacks included Rounders corn balls, Crunchy Fries, Wheat Crunchies, Champs (corn curls), Jaws and Seyshells.

Murphys nuts could be savoured in a range of flavours – salted, dry roasted and with raisins.

There was even a fruit and nut cocktail.

In October 1986, the Telegraph ran a special feature about Sooner Foods, then employing 1,750 people, which made it second only to the British Steel Corporation when it came to providing local employment.

“It is an astonishing story from dabblings in a fish and chip shop pan after the Second World War to a place in the national market alongside the other giants like Golden Wonder and Smiths,” the Telegraph told readers 32 years ago.

The story began around 1947 when the firm’s founder and later managing director, Biff Riley, took a £20 a week gamble by giving up his job.

In those days, sweets were still rationed and the only name in crisps was Smiths.

Biff’s father Bill ran three fish and chip shops inScunthorpe and was not amused when he heard of his son’s ambition to make crisps.

But Biff was willing to follow his instincts and quit his well-paid and secure post an an electrician on Redbourn steelworks.

By playing double-bass in a local dance band in the evenings, he raised sufficient cash to set up business in a converted stable to the rear of a terraced house on Allenby Street.

Biff was chief fryer – and most other things – and took on four women to help him package his crisps.

By 1949 the output was 100 tins a day!

Brother Dennis joined the business and together they weathered a number of financial set-backs, culminating in the Korean War when supplies of vegetable oil using in frying dried up, being rationed in the UK for two years and forcing many food concerns out of business. But not Rileys.

The firm expanded into a row of terraced houses – a big move – but there were complaints from neighbours about the noise and smell.

A compromise was reached, with Scunthorpe Borough Council offering Rileys its familiar home on Colin Road, off Cottage Beck Road.

But the multi-million pound success story really began in 1972 when Bob Curgenven arrived in Scunthorpe with a newly-awarded first class honours degree in engineering from Cambridge University.

Being married to Biff’s niece Lesley, he intended to use the firm as part of his study for a doctorate. But he soon became sales director, aged only 23.

Another milestone came in 1979 when the firm’s longest-serving workers, Edith Goodson and Claire Wells, officially retired after starting with Biff in his back street era.

By 1981 Rileys Potato Crisps had become known by new names RPC Limited and Sooner Foods, and the empire had spread into Kettering Road and Northampton Road, as well as having depots throughout the UK.

In June that year, Bob Curgenven led a £3-million+ deal to take over control of the firm. He became chairman of the board.

June 1982 saw the firm sold in a deal worth £13.5-million to York-based Rowntree Mackintosh.

Two years later, Bob relinquished his chairmanship of Sooner Foods and moved to Jersey.

In its October 1986 report, the Telegraph said: “Sooner now produces seven per cent of the crisps eaten in Britain today and is chasing Walkers, KP, Golden Wonder and Smiths in the sales league.”

• Scunthorpe