Obituary: Ken Morrison died on February 1st

AS HE patrolled the aisles of his shops in Leeds, Boroughbridge or wherever he might be, in his yellow and black Morrisons tie and his short-sleeved “get cracking” shirt, Ken Morrison’s eyes would gleam with happiness. He was a grocer, the best job in the world. Better still, he was the best grocer in Yorkshire, God’s own county, where folk didn’t part with their money without a good excuse. The fact that his food-supermarket chain had also grown into Britain’s fourth-biggest, up from his father’s egg-and-butter stall in Bradford market, was also gratifying. Record sales and profits for 35 years, between flotation in 1967 and entering the FTSE 100 in 2001, were not to be sneezed at. But nothing was more energising than that daily round of pacing the floor, chatting to customers and giving the staff either pats on the head or kicks up the backside, as warranted.

During these strolls he missed nothing out. He checked the vegetables weren’t wilting and the cream not sloppy on the eclairs, and would take the cellophane off sandwiches to see how fresh they were. Watching such details was the habit of a lifetime. How many hours had he spent as a boy in that dark shed behind the house, holding eggs up to a candle to make sure there were no chicks inside? He’d done that from the age of five, helped out on the stall from nine and taken it over at 21, with no training save what he’d picked up at the dinner table. He knew his craft. For example: you could tell how a business was doing not by the shiny front door (though, by 2016, 11m customers a week were coming through his), but from what it threw away. If time allowed his visits would include a good look through the bins at the back, which was one reason why he didn’t often wear a suit.