Comedian and Junior Bake Off presenter Harry Hill explains why you should never sneak up on Mary Berry from behind – and why, when buying the yellow bendy things, we need to think of the farmers
I think we all remember the first time we saw a banana. For me, it was in a greengrocers in rural Kent. It seemed to be smiling at me. I sidled up to it and we got chatting and, well, we’ve been friends ever since.
Bananas have been there for me through good times and bad – whether as a tasty, potassium-rich mid-morning snack or sliced up in custard for a pudding, or indeed shoved whole down the end of a love rival’s exhaust pipe to exact revenge.
Sadly, in the early 1950s, bananas developed a reputation for being slippery when trodden on and featured in countless comedy sketches and routines. It was simple anti-banana propaganda launched by the powerful pear lobby, who were unhappy about the banana’s meteoric rise in popularity. The truth is the skin of a banana is actually quite sticky and can be used as a powerful adhesive.
HARRY’S BANANA FACTS
• Did you know we consume something like five million bananas every year? Some two million of these are eaten in front of daily ITV magazine show Loose Women.
• In some areas of Cornwall you can be fined for parking on a banana.
• After Lord Horatio Nelson lost his arm in battle, he kept seven bananas inside the empty sleeve of his jacket, leading to the nickname ‘Banana Dispenser’.
• Mary Berry uses a black banana as a form of defence against over-zealous fans. If you approach her unexpectedly, she may well reach into her handbag, produce a black banana and scream, ‘Back off! I’m tooled up!’
• One in three bananas bought in the UK is Fairtrade, making a huge difference to more than 36,000 farmers, workers and their
