Loch Fyne Oysters had won a contract to supply oysters to Tesco. It had been hard to win, and they had celebrated the victory with champagne. The contract provided good steady business, if at low margins.
   But the relationship was not one of equals, nor even of senior and junior partners. Andy Lane:
   ‘We’d go down to Tesco head office in wherever it was. There was a horrible atmosphere of fear. You’d see all the suppliers lining up, their jobs and lives depending on it. I thought the whole relationship was ghastly, I fell prey to recurring nightmares about negotiating with the SS.
   ‘Then they became more and more and more demanding, and they started to do more and more promotions with oysters, and we always paid. And the final straw came one day when we’d been down to London to see them and the next day we got a phone call to say ‘By the way we’re doing another promotion at 25% off.’
   ‘We always said we didn’t want to do these things. So we said we weren’t going to do it. They insisted and it went backwards and forwards. And I had this uncomfortable feeling that if we gave in to these people we’d have sold our souls. Then the high heidyin of the department came on the phone, to say that we had to do it, and I ended up saying, ‘No, we won’t. And actually, you can fuck off !’
   ‘We pulled out, and I’m very glad we did. By saying no we won back our souls. I felt that if we’d caved in we’d have lost them for ever.’