ICELAND, one of Britain's best known supermarkets, has been using its social media channels to celebrate its 50th anniversary this week.

The famous frozen food outlet store started life in Leg Street, Oswestry, before founder Sir Malcolm Walker expanded his empire all over the country, with the current headquarters in Deeside.

While much larger celebrations have had to be put on hold because of Covid-19, the company did send birthday cakes to all its stores and took to Twitter to enjoy itself with followers, both famous and every day.

While Sir Malcolm has eschewed the limelight this week – preferring to allow the company to take the plaudits – he has spoken of his satisfaction of bringing the business back under family control, with the help of Tarsem Dhaliwal.

In a specially-prepared documentary, he said: "2020 has been a year like no other with the impact of Coronavirus.

"But in June this year, we finally got Iceland back into family ownership.

"Tarsem and myself bought the company and we finally got it back into family hands.

Mr Dhaliwal, who is the chief executive officer, added: "You want to be partners with someone that you absolutely trust, and with Malcolm, I'm there."

In the documentary, Sir Malcolm charts his career, from his early days in retail at Woolworths, where he eventually met Peter Hinchcliffe with whom he started Iceland.

The pair started off selling strawberries on the Horseshoe Pass before their next job was opening an 'open freezer' store selling loose vegetables in Oswestry, all while they still working at 'Woolies', which led to their sacking.

For more on the documentary, head to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HdbUliH470

Meanwhile, on Twitter this week, the company claimed that England's clash with Iceland was specially put on for their birthday celebrations, while also tweeting celebrities who also turned 50 in 2020 for their support.

To filmmaker Louis Theroux, they said: "Hi @louistheroux, we’re sure you’ve got better things to do but you turned 50 this year and so do we and we’ll get a big pat on the back if you tweet us Happy Birthday…It’ll really help us get ‘theroux’ our lockdown 50th…we’ll stop now."

To footballer Alan Shearer: "Turning 50 in a pandemic is a bit like…a)Not winning the FA Cup b)Losing your hair c)Supporting Newcastle United.

"We love you really @alanshearer, happy ‘we both turned 50 in 2020’ to us."

And to supermodel Naomi Campbell, they said: "Oh hey @NaomiCampbell, we just want to congratulate you on looking nearly as good as us at 50.

"It’s almost as though you’re FROZEN in time…yeah we regret that one already."