Death of Darlington-born crisp supremo behind Phileas Fogg

He was Roger McKechnie, who also made Tudor crisps worth climbing a mountain for.

He was born in Darlington in 1941, where his father, Harry, was a bank manager. He went to the private school of Wrekin College in Shropshire and then studied economics at Newcastle university.

Roger McKechnie at The Samling in Ambleside, a luxury hotel he created out of an 18th Century mansion called Doves Nest, which overlooks Lake Windermere

After a spell in marketing with Proctor & Gamble, he returned to the North East to take charge of marketing with Tudor Crisps, a brand started in Newcastle in 1947 which, in 1962, was the first to trial the salt and vinegar flavour.

In McKechnie’s time, Tudor became renowned for its slogans – “a canny bag o’Tudor” – and its TV adverts which featured pronounced North East accents. One featured a paperboy who was faced by the prospect of delivering to the top floor of the 280ft Derwent Tower, nicknamed the Dulston Rocket, without a lift and with only a bag of crisps as a reward.

He says happily: “For Tudor, I’d climb a mountain.”

The advert finished with: “A crisp that’s really worth its salt.”

A still from the early 1970s advert for Tudor crisps

From marketing, McKechnie rose to become managing director of Tudor, but when, in the early 1980s, the parent company, Associated Biscuits, wanted him to move south to promote Smiths Crisps, he jumped ship and set up Derwent Valley Foods at Consett.

The town had just lost its defining steelworks, but McKechnie’s company made its base in Medomsley Road a key part of its identity, because from Medomsley Road you could taste the world.

He introduced a line of snacks that explorer Phileas Fogg had apparently tasted on his journey around the world: Tortilla Chips, Punjab Puri and Mignon Morceaux. In the 1980s, the extravagant tastes – Mignon Morceaux were intense garlic butter bread sticks – were all anyone wanted to snack on.

The company employed more than 300 people in a town that had been economically devastated a decade earlier, and McKechnie was awarded an MBE.

In 1993, he and his three business partners sold out to United Biscuits for £24m.

He invested his millions in many schemes, creating the Look What We’ve Found brand of gourmet ready-meals and converting an 18th Century mansion overlooking Lake Windermere into a luxurious hotel called The Smaling, which Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise visited.

He also used the word “smaling”, which is Norse for “gathering”, for his philanthropic projects around Hexham and Corbridge, where he lived, which promoted the arts and artists.

He married Eileen in 1966, had six children and adopted three more, and he died in the Tyne Valley on April 24. We are grateful to Rodney Wildsmith for pointing his obituary which appeared in the Daily Telegraph this week.