I thought we had just managed to scrape through the August "silly season", when everyone is on holiday and good stories are hard to come by.

The perennial result is that some pretty contrived events hit the headlines and this year, to my mind, we had a prime example in the quest by British plum growers to find the celebrity most appropriate for their fruit.

While they have claimed success with the so-called It girl known as TPT in the tabloids, I wonder how far the idea will spread. Bananas, have been well represented for some time by a team of sporting celebrities, but what happened to those I recall as the "Friends of Cox"?

More intriguingly, who would you vote for when it comes to choosing public figures associated with products like cabbage, parsnips and celeriac? Answers on a postcard...

• Meanwhile, the government's plan to review how local authorities purchase food for institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons appears pretty innocuous on the surface.

One objective is to use more home-grown produce and cut the import bill ñ which immediately makes friends with the NFU ñ and theoretically should be not too difficult to achieve.

Fruit may be high on the agenda for primary schools but in my experience it's always been the more mundane potatoes, carrots and brassicas which have made up the bulk of the industrial catering orders historically supplied by the wholesale trade.

It's when one starts to get into the small print I can foresee some trouble.

I can understand giving English crops preference when it comes to compliance with environment issues and animal welfare. But when it comes to using freshness as the criteria, with obvious exceptions like salads, soft fruit and mushrooms, it becomes almost impossible to define.

Writing about the fresh produce industry for more than 40 years, has made me realise fresh is more of a concept than a reality. If it has any meaning today, it refers to the fact that crops are sold raw, or semi-prepared. While they obviously are living and can decay, storage and packaging has entirely changed the manner in which produce is distributed and marketed.

After all Cox's and Egremont Russett, for example, live very well in storage at least until Christmas. Bramley is available virtually year round. Red and white cabbage are snugly tucked away with onions, carrots and potatoes through the winter. If freshness is taken to mean the time since harvest, imports will often win hands down.

The NFU has welcomed the fact the review may move contractual arrangements away from the focus on lowest possible price. At a time when all institutions complain about a lack of cash it's unlikely they will pay a premium.

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