Pudsey insurance and motor assistance giant Green Flag celebrated three decades of growth today with a special treat for former employees.

The firm, which started life as a four man operation in Claremont Garage, Bradford, gave a group of ex-workers a full tour around its hi-tech headquarters to mark the occasion.

Now employing 1,800 in the UK, the company has come a long way since its humble beginnings as National Breakdown Recovery Club in 1971.

Motors assistance network manager Brian Hagan, the company's longest serving member of staff with 25 years experience, knows better than anyone how things have moved on.

He said: "There were around six or seven employees when I joined and now I'm with a company that's employing thousands.

"We used to hold customer details on paper files and had a map on the wall where we'd stick a pin when we got a call, then look in the book to see who was the nearest operator.

"Now around 70 per cent of our work is done electronically."

Mr Hagan has managed to keep an unusual record of the company's changing faces - by collecting every different corporate tie it has produced over the years.

He said: "I've got them all, going back to a kipper tie with the National Breakdown logo on it through all the different styles!"

National Breakdown was taken over by National Car Parks in 1984 and made the name change to Green Flag in 1995.

In 1999 insurance business Direct Line bought Green Flag and merged it with Direct Line Partnerships to create the Green Flag Group.

Director of motoring assistance, Tony Dunlop, said: "Our 30th birthday gives us the opportunity to reflect on the massive growth the organisation has seen in the last three decades.

"The motoring assistance brand, once National Breakdown, has gone from having a dozen customers to more than four million.

"We have also seen significant technological advances both within the network and in the control room."