Topping the lot: Ice cream boss is entrepreneur of the year

He told the audience of national business leaders that Mr Ropner, the co-founder of R&R Ice Cream who passed away this year, was a “true entrepreneur”.

Accepting his award, Mr Lambert said: “I’d like to say to him, up there, it was what you started, 30 years ago, that has turned into an extraordinary success story.”

The entrepreneurs took an old Victorian diary in North Yorkshire and turned it into a £750m-turnover business with 3,000 employees.

Mr Lambert added: “What drives us is young people and success and watching people grow and take challenges and actually fill the space that you perhaps never realised five years before you could ever create. I tell you what, they never let you down.”

The private equity-backed business is planning expansion into the Middle East and America after making big in-roads into Europe.

City grandee Sir Nigel Rudd, who led the judging panel, said Mr Lambert demonstrated “fantastic tenacity” and “vision, ambition and resilience” in transforming the European market over the last quarter of a century.

Introducing the evening, Stuart Watson, a partner at EY in Leeds, told audience that the shortlist of entrepreneurs represented revenues of nearly £5bn and employed 54,000 people.

Host Jeremy Vine, the BBC presenter, interviewed golfing star Jose Maria Olazabal, the captain of Team Europe at the 2012 Ryder Cup.

Mr Olazabal spoke of the importance of self-belief, being prepared for adversity and planning for the long term.

He also recalled his friendship with late mentor Seve Ballesteros. “He prepared me for certain things in the future,” he said.

Mr Olazabal said of his victorious Ryder Cup team: “You might think that they have their own egos and might be a little bit difficult, but they have the team spirit. They were for the team.”

The EY awards honoured entrepreneurs from across the country.

Alan McLeish launched his rail maintenance business QTS in South Lanarkshire after borrowing £300 from his mother to buy a chainsaw with “three wee kids to support”.

Alex Chesterman, the founder of property website Zoopla, won the retail category. He told the audience that successful entrepreneurs are “not the easiest people to live with”.

EY presented a special global achievement award to Warren East and Mike Muller of ARM Holdings, the multinational semiconductor and software design company with offices in Cambridge and Sheffield.

Mr Muller, chief technology officer, said: “Technology has to be good enough, but the business has to be absolutely excellent.”

The best turnaround award went to Steve Bennett, the founder of The Genuine Gemstone Company whose motto is “if you rest, you rust”.

Introducing the category for international entrepreneur, Sir Nigel Rudd said: “We have successfully exported ideas, product and talent for hundreds of years.”

He presented the award to Lloyd Dorfman, who founded the Travelex chain in the 1970s and “is still going strong today”.

“He just came back from doing a deal in Mongolia,” said Sir Nigel, who is chairman of Heathrow and Invensys.

Mr Dorfman said: “The Travelex story is the one little shop that became the global business. It’s British based, British expertise and today I sit with governors of central banks, finance ministers, prime ministers and presidents and they say ‘we want Travelex to come to our airports and our countries’.”

Furniture manufacturer Glencraft won the social enterprise award for helping its disabled workforce of 45 “find dignity through work”.

Duncan Skinner, chairman, said: “If you have never made love on a Glencraft mattress you have to ask yourself why.”

Introducing the final award for overall winner, EY chief Steve Varley said: “It’s difficult not to feel a palpable shift in the fortunes of the UK economy with headlines like ‘UK economy growing at fastest rate in the developed world’.

“The UK is increasingly standing tall in the world and walking with a growing swagger.”

He said the Item Club will upgrade its economic forecast on Monday.

Mr Lambert is the first Yorkshireman to win the UK award since the programme was launched 15 years ago.

Speaking afterwards to the Yorkshire Post, Mr Lambert said: “It’s the best thing our business could ever have possibly dreamed of. It’s a true award for business in Yorkshire and for the team we have in Yorkshire and I am so proud of being given it and I take it for the whole team at R&R.”

@bernardginns