YOU'D think that at the age of 79, Peter Asquith would be winding down.
Prior to our mid-morning interview he's already opened an Asda Essentials store in Pontefract, where he was duty bound to cut through a 15ft piece of liquorice, in addition to being accosted by dozens of chatty shoppers and members of the local Press.
Later in the week the successful racehorse owner is spotted at York races and no doubt he also spent a morning, as he regularly does, at the supermarket giant's headquarters in Leeds.
At the store opening it is suggested we conduct the interview on site, but the Asda honorary life president excitedly replies that he wants to show me where an important chapter of the company's story began.
We meet again inside a small, detached property on the outskirts of Pontefract, where Asquith's office is based.
His ground floor base is modestly kitted out with a large desk and leather settee.
Pictures of several of his racehorses, past and present, are dotted around the walls of the room.
It doesn't seem the kind of venue suitable to house Asquith's successful property business, whose work includes helping Asda find suitable sites for new stores.
So why is it so important to him?
"I was born here," he says. "And it has been in the family for longer than my years."
Dressed in a smart pale suit and tinted glasses, Asquith still looks the part and is an exuberant character.
He says if he explained his business career in full, the B&B up the road would have to put me up overnight so a second interview session could be held the next day.
For Asquith the Asda Essentials concept, which is being rolled out across the country and sees the stores sell 95 per cent of own brand goods at discount prices, harks back to the days when he started out in the grocery sector.
"When we had started in the 1960s, we were taking off between 14 and 17 per cent of the prices of what Tesco was selling at that time," he says.
"We always said we wanted to try to be successful but if we could sell produce cheaper than anywhere else then that was important.
"I'm chuffed that Essentials has been launched because that is what Asda is all about."
However, the launch of the Essentials concept, and the continued dominance of Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury's, has provided yet another barrier for the independent retailer to try to overcome.
It is somewhat ironic that Asquith, who started his business as an independent, has been instrumental in spawning the growth of the supermarket which many critics say is killing off the local grocer, butcher or baker.
But he believes the corner shop can not only survive but prosper.
"There's a future for them," he says. "But they've got to specialise."
Asquith believes shopping habits are the key to the survival of the sole trader.
But he admits: "You can go back to your corner shops but you're going to pay 10 to 12 per cent more in price."
There seem to be several differing versions of history regarding Asquith's role in the founding of Asda.
But the man himself, still bright as a button, is adamant that his timeline is spot on.
"My mum and dad were in the butchers trade," he recalls. "They had three mobile operations and three established ones in the area."
Asquith and his brother Fred, who died in 2002, had been involved in the business, WR Asquith, before deciding to go it alone.
"My brother and I set up together and the first store we had was in Pontefract in 1958.
"It was like any ordinary grocer and it was self-service. There was nothing of our size store at the time around here. The nearest would have been Ken Morrison in Bradford."
However, Asquith recalls that it took a promotion with Crosse & Blackwell to make the business a success – and along with it introduced the idea of discounting.
The promotion involved customers sending off a sticker from the sauces to get a sixpence postal order back.
The Asquith brothers decided to take the stickers off themselves and send off for the postal orders. In this way they could sell the sauces at sixpence cheaper.
"It was 18 months before we got lift-off with the Crosse & Blackwell promotions," says Asquith. "We never looked back after that."
After selling the shop to Thrift Stores, Fred, Peter and their business partner Jack Hewitt, who later became managing director of Asda, considered taking some time out.
"Jack, Fred and I retired for about six weeks but after that period we were at it again."
In 1963, they converted a former cinema in Castleford, which had originally been The Queens theatre, into a self-service supermarket.
A second Queens outlet soon followed at Edlington, near Doncaster, before Asquith built the first supermarket from scratch on the site of the old Palace Cinema at South Elmsall, near Pontefract, in 1965.
The next chapter in the story was perhaps the most important.
"We wanted someone to take over on the meat side," recalls Asquith. "Doing meat was very hard work. We'd be down starting at 5.30am and not be finished by 8.30pm.
"I took a day off and went down to Craven House and met the chairman of Associated Dairies. I was passed on to the managing director and the guy in charge of meat and they said they wanted to come on as a joint company."
Heavily involved in the discussions had been Noel Stockdale, the then chairman of Associated Dairies, who was later knighted. "If Noel Stockdale hadn't been there (at Associated Dairies) at the time, none of this would have happened," says Asquith.
Asquith is keen to clarify a point which has been debated for more than 40 years.
And that is the Asquith family's contribution to the Asda name. He opens a book entitled The Grocers by Andrew Seth and Geoffrey Randall at The Asda Story chapter. On the page is a simple equation which reads: ASquith + DAiries = the birth of Asda.
Proud of his family's success, Asquith is adamant this is how the name Asda was formed; not by merging Associated and Dairies as many believe.
Following the link up with Associated Dairies more stores quickly opened, with the first outside Yorkshire opening in Billingham in Teesside in 1966.
"Ken Morrison has always kept on with what he has been doing well and we decided to do that," remembers Asquith. Asda went on to acquire two stores in Nottingham and Leeds owned by US retailer Government Exchange Mart (GEM).
"We jumped from 10,000 and 20,000sq-ft premises to 70,000sq-ft stores," says Asquith.
The larger stores gave the chain an advantage over its rivals, the space to develop its own range of merchandise at low prices and set the standard for how big a supermarket could be. By 1970, Asda had more than 30 stores, including eight at more than 50,000sq-ft, and continued to grow.
But in 1980 Asquith left the company. He's not keen to go into details but cites a "policy disagreement" as the main reason for his departure.
Despite Asquith's success with racehorses, and by then in his sixties, he was hungry to get back into business and rejoined Asda in 1989.
"I went back originally to try to buy property on the market for Asda. I think it is just as difficult as it ever was today to get the sites."
Asquith became an honorary life president of the company in 2004 and still keeps staff at Asda House in Leeds on their toes.
"I go in every week and they keep me informed and I tell them if I think they're doing it all right or not. They probably say 'What's that daft old bugger doing here today?' Then again I don't get any brass for it, so they're probably right!" As Asquith approaches his 80th birthday, one question remains. Why is he still so active?
"The thing is, I've always enjoyed what I'm doing and that makes a real difference," he enthuses. "While my heart is still beating, I'll carry on."
ian.briggs@ypn.co.uk

"The thing is, I've always enjoyed what I'm doing and that makes a real difference. While my heart is still beating, I'll carry on."

PETER ASQUITH

Date of birth: January 4, 1927.
Title: Honorary life president of Asda.
Education: The King's School in Pontefract (I wasn't much of an academic and left at 16, but I excelled at rugby and swimming).
First job: At the family butcher's business in Pontefract .
Favourite holiday destination: The Algarve, Portugal.
Favourite film: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid .
Last book read: One of the Hornblower books by CS Forester, but I'm not an avid reader .
Car driven: Lexus LS430.

Winning ways on the racecourse

PETER Asquith is no stranger to seeing his racehorses gallop first past the winning post.
Celtic Mill has been his most successful horse of recent years, winning the St Giles Handicap at Pontefract in 2003 and Scarborough Stakes at Doncaster in 2004.
Celtic Mill triumphed in the five furlong sprint Group Two Temple Stakes at Sandown last year, giving the horse's trainer David Barker, of Scorton, near Catterick, his biggest win at the time.
The horse, which will try to defend its Sandown title this coming weekend, is one of a number of progeny of Madam Millie to have been successfully bred at racehorse stud premises Burns Farm in East Keswick, West Yorkshire.
"Celtic Mill is probably the best horse I've ever had," enthuses Asquith. The stud, which is located just 400 yards from Asquith's Reighton House home, has been run by his daughter Gay Scott and her husband Paul for the last 28 years.
"At my age, it is good to nip down and have a look at the horses and raise any points."
Prior to her success in the paddocks, Madam Millie won three races in 1988, under Asquith's ownership.
Madam Millie is the dam of Mr Wolf, also owned by Asquith and trained by Barker.
Asquith said despite receiving invites to race in Hong Kong and Dubai, and keeping one of his horses in France, he would rather race in the UK because of its firmer courses.
Over the past few years, Burns Farm has invested in new blood, with purchases including Lake Nipigon last December.