The sherry ritual surprised Linda Bryne when she joined the Elizabeth Shaw chocolate factory in Greenbank, Bristol. She was just 17 and was glad when the ritual eventually petered out. She also recalls the 'incredible amount of hierarchy' in the 1970s,'you were not allowed to wander through any departments without a specific reason to be there.'

But she got to know everyone really well and felt 'there was an incredible loyalty and a wonderful factory grapevine ... providing you were not the one talked about.'

She recalls how the engineering team decide to play a prank one day, "We found they had been out in the car park and had attached a big windup key to the roof of one of their colleagues' cars - an old Morris 1000". There were football and skittles teams and staff even socialised together. 'When I was in my early 20s, there was a lot of us at the time and we did a lot of growing up together. We used to have these discos, down Old Market way'.

Rose Burke also believes that good relations between colleagues were important. Originally from Jamaica, she started work at the Greenbank factory in 1973 and became a supervisor, "a nice friendly atmosphere makes all the difference. It's an extension of your family, sort of thing!" The connection between colleagues was most noticeable when people left. 'We've had all the tears and all of us hugging and crying!'