This was a blog post on my old Graham Bandage account. I have reposted it here because there is no law against it.

 

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Who invented the names of fruit? I have often wondered.

I imagine there was a Fruit Naming Board. And here I am, imagining it…

INT. FRUIT NAMING BOARD – DAY

BOSS: 
Right, what have we got next?

LACKEY: 
There’s this one, Clive. This round, orange thing.

BOSS: 
Skin’s a bit tough.

LACKEY: 
Yeah, you peel it off. And if you squeeze it, I reckon you could sell the juice in tiny bottles in pubs for a fortune.

BOSS: 
Right. So it’s round, and it’s orange… I think a name suggests itself. We’ll call it … a round.

LACKEY: 
Won’t that cause confusion in pubs, Clive?

BOSS: 
All right, an orange, then. What’s next?

LACKEY: 
Bit of bad news on the grape front. Swindon’s already claimed it for those little round things that come in bunches.

BOSS:  
Ah, bollocks! All right, we’ll call it a yellow.

LACKEY: 
Clive, you can’t just name fruits after their colour all the time. Besides, I think Swindon’s got first dibs on that for the long curved thing they found.

BOSS: 
Oh, this is just stupid. I know! I know the very thing that will stop the confusion. We’ll call ours a grapefruit.

LACKEY: 
What? To distinguish it from the other sort of grape that’s also a fruit?

BOSS: 
Ian, who’s the boss here? Next?

LACKEY:  
We’ve got this peach. It’s sweet as nectar, but, and here’s the thing, it’s got smooth skin.

BOSS:  
What? It’s got no fur and it’s sweet as nectar, Ian? Nectar, Ian… Hmm, I know! An alo-peach-ia!

I bet that’s exactly how it happened.