TV’s ice man gives old job cold shoulder

If marketers feel a strange affinity with the Ice Master, the compere of ITV’s new Saturday night show, Ice Warriors, it is because he is a kindred spirit.

In his street clothes The Ice Master is Philip Ferentinos who, for three-and-a-half years, was a marketing manager with Birds Eye Wall’s.

The six-foot-five, 17-stone, former marketer introduced Magnum to the UK, worked on Feast and spent time in Birds Eye’s frozen foods new product development department before leaving the company in 1993.

But the lure of greasepaint always lurked within this hard-boiled Unilever marketer. “In my heart, I always wanted to be an actor,” he says.

If former Unilever colleagues do not recognise the name Ferentinos it is because he was called Philip Evans when he worked there. He comments: “Ferentinos is my Greek mother’s name. I have a dark complexion so I decided to change my name to suit my brand.”