It stands on Largs seafront, sparkling in the autumn sunshine, an art deco temple to one of life's enduring pleasures: ice-cream. But inside, amid the gold-sprayed basketry chairs and the awkward aproned young waitresses, there are few takers for the toasted sandwiches and double scoops of strawberry and vanilla. There's a definite end-of-season feel at Nardini's, end of an era some would say.

Within a few weeks the last tenuous link between the Nardini family and the north Ayrshire resort's best-known business is likely to be broken, with the announcement that the operation has been sold.

There have been more than 30 expressions of interest in the company, which also runs four other restaurants in Glasgow and East Kilbride and still makes its own ice-cream in a factory behind the Largs restaurant.

Though the company has been forced to sell assets to stay in the black over recent years, it is likely to attract an offer of between (pounds) 2.5m and (pounds) 3.5m. Such is the price of a good name, or what's left of it after a savage family feud that has all the hallmarks of the sort of TV drama in which you might encounter actress Daniela Nardini. Odd that, because she appears in this one for real.

Yesterday, her father, 71-year old Aldo Nardini, who hasn't set foot in the restaurant since he was ousted from the board two years ago, was taken by surprise when The Herald sought his response to the news that a sale was imminent, following a report in our business pages on Monday.

''Nobody has contacted me about this. I'll be telephoning them to find out why,'' said Mr Nardini, who still owns 16.66% of the shares along with his wife, Sandra. Most of the rest of the business is owned by a holding company in which Aldo's 66-year-old brother, Pete Nardini, and the company chairman, David Hendry, are the only shareholders. Pete Nardini, who suffers from a heart complaint, retired from the business last year, but remains on the board in a non-executive capacity.

Though the brothers worked together in the business for 40 years and still both live near one another in Largs, they have not met or spoken for two years. ''I haven't seen my brother for a long time. I don't even know where he is. He spends a lot of time in Italy, I've heard,'' said Aldo Nardini yesterday.

The younger brother threw out a small olive branch when I interviewed him late last year, aware perhaps that they may soon run out of time for reconciliations.

''Though it's true, we haven't spoken for a year or more, there's no reason not to now. He was the head of the family and I still love him as a brother. I don't know how things got so out of hand,'' he said.

But Aldo Nardini remains embittered at what he sees as treachery by his brother and David Hendry: ''It was inevitable once there were no more Nardinis actively involved in the business. I feel heartbroken that none of the family stayed on to maintain the tradition. I cut my teeth in it and it's part of me. My father and uncles would be turning in their graves if they could see what's happened.''

Meanwhile, daughter Daniela is in Cardiff, filming a six-part television drama in which she plays a lead role as a psychiatrist. ''She was terribly disappointed when we told her the business was on the market. Her first job was scooping ice-cream cones at the foyer during the school holidays. She knows how to serve a proper cone,'' said Aldo Nardini. Two of her brothers carry on the family tradition, serving up their own version of Nardini ice-cream at the family's Il Caffe Casa outlets in the Gyle in Edinburgh and at the St Enoch's Centre in Glasgow. A third brother, Peter, was killed in a car crash.

Both brothers look back fondly on the halcyon days of the Nardini empire. Pete was born the same month the Largs restaurant opened, June 1935, dispelling the grey mood left by the Depression and pandering to a yearning for gaiety.

It looked like the perfect family partnership. Pietro Nardini had been just 14 when he arrived in Paisley from Tuscany in 1890 and began selling door to door from a suitcase to save up to buy a cafe. His three sons, spotting the money to be made on the popular Clyde coast, had sold up and snapped up for (pounds) 10,000 an old mansion on the front at Largs. The famous restaurant was built in its garden.

There, Augusto (Gus) drove the business, while Sandrino (Sandy) was the front-of-house man and Nardino (Pete and Aldo's father) was the financial brain of the business.

At the height of its popularity, crowds queued round the block on sunny weekends and the business could sell 1000 gallons of ice-cream in two days.

The downturn didn't set in in earnest until the seventies, by which time you could get a fortnight's guaranteed sunshine on the Costa Brava for the price of two weeks in Largs and trade became increasingly focused on a few sunny summer weekends. The situation was aggravated by a disastrous hotel venture.

There were disagreements about whether and how the business could be turned around. Aldo argued that the business should be scaled down and could continue to be profitable, provided the family presence was retained. Pete, encouraged by the success of a Nardini outlet at the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival, was convinced that the business had to move outwards and take their famous name to other parts of Scotland.

But with a shareholding scattered unevenly across six family members (the grown-up children of the three brothers), it was difficult to secure agreement on anything.

In 1997, convinced that bankruptcy was looming, Pete brought in his old friend, David Hendry, an entrepreneur who had built up a profitable undertaking business.

Between them they were able to buy up enough shares to gain control of the company. Hendry set about taking cost out of the business and embarked on a major refurbishment of the Largs premises. At first Aldo supported the strategy, even when three of the cousins (Sandrino's three sons, Robbie, Ricky, and Fabby) were forced out in 1998.

The following year it was Aldo's turn for the chop and he claims that the vote to remove him from the board came like a thunderbolt. The arguments didn't stop there. Aldo and Sandra refused to sell their shares, claiming the offer they received for them was ''derisory''. Then the original company, P Nardini and Sons, tried to take Aldo and his family to court, claiming that they were passing off the ice-cream being sold at the latter's Il Caffe Casa outlets as the authentic Nardini product, when the two were in fact quite different.

Pete Nardini maintained that the ice-cream sold in Largs and at the other Nardini outlets was made in bulk in a large modern plant behind the original restaurant in Largs. The company had recently invested (pounds) 200,000 bringing it up to the new strict EU standards. The ice-cream is made using the ''continuous freezing'' method. Because this uses an air pump, it has a light, even texture. David Hendry and Pete Nardini maintain that Nardini's of Largs has been producing ice-cream using this method for nearly 50 years.

By contrast, the ice-cream served up in the Il Caffe Casa outlets is made by Aldo's sons, Nicky and Aldo Junior, using the more traditional ''batch method''. There's no air pump, so the texture is denser and it is darker in colour. It's also made in 10-litre batches to what Aldo terms ''a secret family formula'', as employed in the early days of the operation.

The case was dropped just before the second hearing, with P Nardini and Sons paying costs. During the first hearing, in her father's absence, Daniela had appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court to defend her father's use of the family name. As the actress had found fame through her portrayal of a feisty lawyer in the television drama That's Life, this looked a bit like life immitating art.

These days Aldo Nardini devotes a lot of time to looking after his 14-year-old grandson, Alexander, who comes to his house after school each day. ''If I was 10 years younger it would be different. If I was 10 years younger, I'd roll up my sleeves and get torn in.''

Instead, though he has finally given up running, he still keeps himself fit with strenuous gym sessions and ''serious walking''. He covers more than 30 miles a week.

Pete has always been a man of fewer words than Aldo. ''I don't think he'll be making any comment. He's out with the dog. No, don't leave a number,'' said his wife, Catriona. Maybe one day Pete will be walking his dog and Aldo will be out doing his power walking and the two brothers will meet on some footpath in the town that is synonymous with their name.

Then finally perhaps they will be able to talk of the happier days, the knickerbocker glory days of Nardini's of Largs.