My two-year-old was caught shoplifting last week. Accompanied by his four-year-old brother, both wearing new pants on their heads, he had added a DVD to the shopping trolley. The security guard who lifted him out was laughing as he carried the bags to the car and the shop assistant shouted: “See you tomorrow, we're getting some more Lego for you.”

A typical village shop, except that it wasn't, it was the Tiverton Tesco, one of the supermarket chain's 1,770 stores in Britain, which made £3.128 billion in profit last year.

You want to hate Tesco, but it's impossible. You know that you should boycott it, but you can't. Making that kind of money in a recession seems obscene. The company said yesterday that it planned to double in size every decade after reporting that it is now taking more than £1 billion a week.

It has squeezed farmers with its milk monopoly and its obsession with identical new potatoes, it has concreted over green fields and promoted asparagus in November. It has chased away the butcher, baker and candlestick maker, enticed little children into its stores with jumbo packets of Haribos and stoked the obesity crisis with its Krispy Kreme donuts.

There is little that is cosy or cuddly about Tesco and yet £1 in £7 spent on the high street still goes into its tills. M&S is a national obsession, mothers brag about their Primark cashmere, grannies reminisce about Woolies, but Tesco has few cheerleaders. It's a guilty secret. Everyone is sucked through the air-conditioned portals once in a while for a packet of razor blades, a six-pack of crisps, a barbeque set, the High School Musical DVD or egg and spinach linguine from the Finest range. At night they go online to buy their toothpaste and washing-up liquid.

Few are prepared to admit to a love affair with the brand, yet if we didn't have Tesco what would we do? We could shop at Asda, owned by the even bigger American conglomerate Wal-Mart, buy hot cross buns from Lidl, but they taste half as nice, or we could upgrade to M&S and forfeit a new sofa.

The ideal solution would be to spend our days shopping on the high street, winding our way from the greengrocer's to the fishmonger's. But we would also have to give up the idea of both parents working. Single people would have to spend their evenings digging up potatoes from their allotments and their Saturdays at the butcher's.

Britain needs supermarkets as well as farmer's markets. People who work often have only enough time and energy to pick up a shepherd's pie on the way home. Specialist shops become a luxury in a recession and six slices of prosciutto cost more from a deli than a whole ham from Tesco.

As the largest of the big four supermarkets, Tesco may be dealing in quantity but that means that it can also demand greater quality and choice for lower prices. The company knows when to be innovative: it was the first to embrace credit cards, loyalty cards and family trolleys. But it also knows when to hold back. It is only as green as its consumers. The chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, whom I interviewed last year, is the ultimate Tesco man and even buys his wife's birthday present at the store. He never understood the point of a £10 loaf of Poilâne bread, and was the first person I heard talking about a downturn when he told me he was pushing his discount range.

“Tesco is classless,” he explained. “We increasingly have the richest buying their loo roll online and the poorest buying their discounted bread rolls.” Its latest success proves that people are prepared to spend the cash put in their pockets by interest rate cuts - but only if they think it is value for money.

The company's other great selling point is its staff. Eighty-year-olds as well as eighteen-year-olds work on the tills, they are given discounts, profit shares and generous pension schemes.

The retention rate for those working at Tesco was 87 per cent last year and the company is happy for staff to “waste time” talking to customers. The delivery woman from Tesco Direct stops to have a cup of tea at the farms (the farmers in Devon use Tesco too) after she has unloaded the crates.

The only criticism that should be levelled at Tesco is that it is not successful enough. Our superstar is floundering in America. It has misunderstood the superfreezer culture, assuming that Americans actually want to shop more than once a fortnight for their groceries, and it opened in the boom states of Arizona, Phoenix and Nevada, which have been the first to go bust.

In Britain, in my experience, it still has to sort out a few problems - hard pears, stale fish, doubling the price of flowers for Mother's Day. But instead of feeling nauseated by the idea that it has prospered while the economy contracts, it should be seen as a success story, breaking into Thailand, South Korea, China and Poland. Tesco is a British hero for creating jobs during the credit crunch, it's the biggest buyer of local produce, purchasing even more now that the pound is weak - and anyone with a pension should be thankful that at least one FTSE 100 company is thriving.

Times Recommends

• Unite workers! You’re in Mr Brown’s pocket
• Obama is bashing on the brick wall of unlogic
• Want to understand the war? Ask the generals