TETLEY tea bosses are stewing after figures showed sales had fallen since axing their popular Tea Folk adverts.

Monthly sales figures published in The Grocer trade magazine claimed the decision to pension off Gaffer, Sidney, Clarence and Archie had backfired, with sales at Tetley, which has a factory in Eaglescliffe, Teesside, employing more than 600 people, plummeting.

The Tea Folk, the face of Tetley for 28 years, were seen as being too old fashioned, too working class and too Northern for the modern face of tea.

Instead Scottish actor Ewan MacGregor was employed for a £15m advertising campaign.

But since the Tea Folk were axed in January figures from Information Resources put monthly sales of teabags at £7.8m in May - down 14 per cent from January.

The figures sparked fears for jobs at Eaglescliffe.

But a spokeswoman for Tetley said last night the company disputed the "misleading" figures, which only compared two months, January and May, out of the whole year.

And she said jobs at Tetley's Northern were perfectly safe.

Tetley's own figures, compiled by independent analysts AC Neilson, show its sales to be up 7.5 per cent by volume, since the launch of the new advertising campaign, making Tetley the industry leader.