Bernard Matthews, the once effervescent entrepreneur behind the biggest turkey-rearing business in Europe, looks a shadow of his former self.

The man who brought the catchphrase “They’re bootiful” to television in adverts for his frozen poultry products in the 1980s has been resting at his country house in Norfolk as the turmoil over bird flu rages around him.

On his doorstep yesterday, he told The Times: “I am sorry, but I’ve had absolutely enough of all this. What we have is a very big problem for the company, as I’m sure you understand. There’s nothing more I want to say.”

Then Mr Matthews, 77, looking frail and dressed in a battered suit, shook hands and disappeared inside his house, which lies out of sight from the main road in the village of Lenwade.

At the back, beyond the private lake and woods, stands the magnificent Great Witching-ham Hall. He bought the dilapidated house for a song in the mid1950s and transformed it into his company’s headquarters. After the cull of 159,000 turkeys this week at his factory farm 40 miles (65km) away in Holton, Suffolk, it remains to be seen whether the battered image of his brand can be similarly restored.

Mr Matthews, who was appointed a CBE in 1992, has long been a very British figure of fun. He founded the frozen poultry industry, built up a mul-timillion-pound international company and bought himself luxuries such as a flat in St Tropez.

But the image that sticks in the public mind is that of the jolly farmer in country tweeds talking in an exaggerated Norfolk burr about his “bootiful” turkey roast.

The Matthews brands — Turkey Dinosaurs, Golden Drummers and Mini-Kievs — have long been the kind of foodstuff that the middle classes have sneered at. He was seen by many as having received his comeuppance in 2005 when Jamie Oliver made Turkey Twizzlers, a combination of processed turkey meat and pork fat, the prime target of his school dinners campaign.

More controversy came last year when two employees at a Norfolk plant were filmed playing “baseball” with live turkeys.

But these PR disasters are minor hiccups in comparison to playing host to the country’s first significant outbreak of H5N1 avian flu. No amount of advertising will counter foot-age of men in protective suits swarming over poultry sheds and filling lorries with the carcasses of thousands of turkeys.

Save for the jokes and the Twizzler trouble, the brand has had calm seas for more than half a century. But the avian flu scare will have left Mr Matthews wondering if consumers will now look for lasting alternatives to the turkey roast.

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