Ready meal king Charlie Bigham: ‘I haven’t seen a single benefit from Brexit yet’

Charlie Bigham at his London headquarters: ‘I wasn’t very good at working for someone else.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans/the Observer

There was a time when Charlie Bigham would regularly get calls from customers demanding to know whether he really existed or was just a made-up front for his fresh ready meals company.

Not only is Bigham real – it’s his face on the pack – he is still the majority owner and a full-time worker at the business he began, appropriately enough, at his kitchen table in 1996.