Peter Jaconelli, who has died aged 73, was the outsize ice cream king of Scarborough who also weighed into local politics to lasting effect. Initially trained as an opera singer - his 21 stones and 50 inch waist would have matched Pavarotti or Placido Domingo - he loyally took over the family business after his father's death and built it into a national wholesale empire.
Unshakeably jovial, Jaconelli was born into a classic Italian ice cream dynasty founded by a great-great-grandfather who emigrated to Scotland in 1833. Among the earliest of tingalary men, named after their ice cream carts with bells to summon trade, he established himself in Glasgow, where the family flourished for a century.
Competition increased, however, and in 1933 Peter's father decided to move to Scarborough in search of the lucrative seaside trade. At the age of seven Peter helped dispense ice cream, a skill he practised until well after his official retirement.
His outstanding voice persuaded his father to send him for operatic training to the Royal College of Music and later to Naples. But he had learned enough of the ice cream trade as a teenager to be well-prepared when the family businesses needed him.
As chairman, he combined a hands-on approach with canny expansion into restaurants and the national distribution of ice cream and fancy desserts. He particularly enjoyed being a walking advertisement for his products and the joys of eating generally. As Mayor of Scarborough in 1970, he entered the Guinness Book of Records (and remains there) for downing 512 oysters in 48 minutes and 42 seconds.
Jaconelli's council career stemmed from the amount of advice he got used to giving while serving dollops of ice cream, and a natural interest - personal as well as commercial - in the town. He was prime mover behind the successful turnaround of Scarborough's small 750-year-old port from semi-dereliction to profit. He also worked with his wife Anna to get a drinks ban introduced on the sometimes rowdy seafront streets.
Jaconelli was chairman of North Yorkshire county council planning committee for many years and of the economic development, planning, land and harbour committees of Scarborough district council. He was sometimes accused of being an overmighty local personality, but avoided pomposity and gave as good as he got.
He retired through ill-health in 1991 but was invariably to be found about the town. The best possible memorial for him would be a Jaconelli play by Scarborough's other most-famous face, Sir Alan Ayckbourn. Peter Jaconelli , ice cream magnate and councillor, born November 25, 1925; died May 15, 1999