Tunnock's London Underground advert whips up a 'storm in a tea cake'

Tea time favourite Tunnock’s has been accused of abandoning its Scottish heritage with a new advert on the London Underground network.

The posters branded the famous and well-loved treat as the “Great British Tea Cake” in a move which has angered some Scots.

Managing director Boyd Tunnock said the advert on the Tube network was “simply a nod” to the BBC show the Great British Bake Off and was not a way to ditch the Lanarkshire-based firm’s Scottish roots.

Mr Tunnock told Radio Scotland: “The advert we put in London was a sort of spoof of the British Bake Off. It was my son-in-law who suggested this and I thought it was okay."

But he later told Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show: "We're in Britain, that's what we say.

"We are advertising the Great British Tea Cake because we had a referendum here and 55 per cent of Scottish people wanted to be in Britain and that's why we're calling it the British tea cake.”

But one SNP member posted on Twitter the move was a “brazen rejection of Scotland”.

Another independence supporter posted: "Imagine if Guinness had said they wouldn't promote Ireland or Toblerone saying they wouldn't promote Switzerland."

But Mr Tunnock branded the furore a “storm in a tea cake” and said the lion rampant image had not been removed from the packaging as some people had claimed.

The family-run Tunnock’s firm was established in 1890 and sells an estimated 3.5 million tea cakes each week.