“WE need ice-cream, we need ice-cream,” pleads Jerry Greenfield, one half of the maverick ice-cream entrepreneurs Ben & Jerry but yesterday morning just another American struggling with London’s heatwave.

Satisfied with a scoop of festival-friendly Glastonberry frozen cherry yogurt, Mr Greenfield admits that life has changed for him and his business partner Ben Cohen since the Vermont “hippie” duo sold their company to Unilever for $326 million.

“I didn’t want to sell the company,” he says of the 2000 deal. “It was a very difficult time. We both tried to find ways to remain in control but it just wasn’t possible.” Formed in 1978 by the childhood friends after they had taken a course in ice-cream making, Ben & Jerry’s had already gone public, reducing the founders’ control.

Mr Greenfield, 55, made $19 million from the deal, which tied Unilever into continuing Ben & Jerry’s annual donations to philanthropic causes. But he is determined to retain the brand’s reputation for backing controversial social and environmental campaigns.

“I brought a giant Baked Alaska pie to Washington to protest at oil-drilling in Alaska,” he said. “I’m campaigning to raise awareness on the $30 billion a year the US Government spends on nuclear weapons instead of immunisation. Sometimes you need to go to Unilever to get permission to do these things.” He hints that, on occasion, Unilever might simply find out later.

Unilever, which also owns Walls, Carte D’Or and Viennetta, has maintained the brand’s quirky flavours and, in a nod to health concerns, introduced low-fat frozen yoghurt in Cherry Garcia and Chocolate Fudge Brownie flavours.

Mr Greenfield, an enthusiastic consumer of his own product, acknowledges concerns over child obesity. “I recommend children replace only one meal a day,” he jokes. But he does not believe that banning the television advertising of high-fat or luxury foods will affect children’s appetites.

However a recent Ben & Jerry’s social audit highlighted a “disappointing” lack of social initiatives since the sale. It questioned whether the company was “simply a Unilever marketing operation using the brand’s reputation for social responsibility to promote sales”.

Yet the UK operation has doubled its charitable donations under Unilever and maintains more autonomy from head office than the US operation, Mr Greenfield maintains.

Now a global ambassador for the brand, he says that his friendship with his co-founder has survived the corporate sell-out. “We only disagreed when he wanted to put big cookie chunks in the ice-cream and I wanted smaller, more equitably distributed chunks. Ben has a fantastic ability to put the unlikeliest flavour combinations together.”

And Oh My! Apple Pie! might become the dish du jour during Britain’s heatwave.

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