Summer in the city

It's hot. Too hot. Dogs are whining and flips are flopping. There's only one way to cool down. Throw down the gauntlet to your friends and do the Ice Bucket Challenge. You will need the following:

• Lots of ice
• Some friends
• A big bucket (actually, a clean dustbin would be better)
• Beer

Put the beer at the bottom of the bucket, tip all of the ice in until it's at least a couple of feet deep and then gather your friends about you. Then plunge your arms into the ice and keep them there. The aim of the game is to keep your arm in the bucket the longest. And whoever wimps out first doesn't get a beer.

When I were a lad

Here's a link to an interview with Richard Reed, the innocent co-founder who grew up wanting to be a coal miner. There's still time young man. Click here.

At ease

Medals are awarded for extreme bravery in the line of duty. Defusing bombs. Taking out an enemy sniper in a remote French village. Destroying the invading fleet with an amazing example of tactical seafaring genius. Or doing some really good marketing. Yes, last week we won some special marketing medals at the Marketing Society awards. First up was Best Marketing Achievement for an SME. And then our newAdam came runner up in the Young Marketeer of the Year section. Good work soldier. Now get down and give me fifty.

Spielberg, your time is over

You may have seen our TV advert (click here if not). Anyway, we like it because we made it for about £4.50, with the help of some obedient fruit and a plank of wood. But we figure there are some better efforts out there. Some cinematic masterpieces featuring our drinks, and perhaps some fruit, a chicken, a hamster or some people or something. So we're offering £250 to anyone who sends us in their little home movie, loosely based on some sort of innocent theme. Obviously, you'll only get the cash if we broadcast your film on our site or in this news, but if we get any belters, we might even end up using them on the telly, with your permission of course.

Stick your work on a CD and send it to:

Lights, Camera, Hamster.
innocent
4 The Goldhawk Estate
Brackenbury Road
London
W6 0BA

And finally...

Check out these cookies. Daniel Gray baked them. We had kind of hoped that he might send them to us, but he ate them as well. Still, what you sow, you reap. And Daniel said that they would have been stale by the time they got here. True.

Spooky PS - today's the longest day - 21st June - and the sun sets at 21.21 in London. Could this be a sign?

Hello. Warm out, isn’t it? Fancy Blackberry owners of the world are probably reading this message in the park, or up a mountain, or on a beach somewhere. If so, spare a thought for all the people confined to offices in the nice weather, and for goodness' sake get your work/life balance, your chi, your prana and your ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong in shape.

Grassed up

When Will left Fruit Towers for the sunnier climes of California he left behind his trusty Hog (that's what they call scooters in the Sunshine State). Little could he have imagined that it would one day be re-born in a blaze of greenery as the latest addition to the innocent fleet. This nippy little number is going to be sent all the way to France for our man in Paris, Jerome, to scoot around on. There's a handy pannier at the back for storing croissants, and perhaps the odd smoothie, and we reckon you could fit a couple of baguettes along the running boards for use in emergencies. Ooh la la.

PS that's Hannah on the scooter, not Jerome.

Morris-ons, and on, and on

We're pleased to report that our take-home cartons are continuing to stack the shelves in the nation's supermarkets. No, we haven't forced them to get a summer job - they're popping up in some new shops as of this week. Tesco are starting to sell them in lots of their supermarkets nationwide, while the nice people at Morrison’s are bringing two recipes (the ever-popular strawberries and bananas and new kid on the block pineapples, bananas and coconuts) into 200 of their shops up and down the country. If you see them, why not pop over and see how they're settling in? They like to see a friendly face now and again.

We are the robots

This isn't a picture from the set of the new Doctor Who. No, these rather fetching models were made by Matt, Aaron and Camille, our friends who work at a nice place called Albion, who we work with from time to time. Using only the boxes from our range of kids' smoothies, they managed to construct a dog and a robot. They’re currently working on one of those big AT-AT things from Star Wars, but they left it at their office as it was too big to carry over on the tube.

The newest in new

This week we welcome two newcomers to the constantly-expanding (just like the universe, apparently) staff at Fruit Towers. Sarah, who will be working in our kitchen to whip up some new recipes, and Irish Kev II. We liked Irish Kev I so much that we thought we'd better get another one in case he got lost, and now that Kev I is trotting off back to the Emerald Isle, Kev II is stepping up to take his place and do difficult sums.

Interesting facts about the new people:

• Sarah has bendy arms and once managed to lick her own elbow
• But she can't burp
• She has eaten slugs and sandstone
• Irish Kev II already misses his favourite Irish cider
• Birds have pooed on his head twice while he's been in parks in Dublin
• At only 5' 7", he's one of the smallest goalkeepers in football

You don’t have to be crazy to work here...

That’s right. You don’t have to be crazy to work here. Normal, natural, healthy and happy people will do just fine. If you can tick all of these boxes, consider yourself more than suitable to apply for one of these nutritious and satisfying jobs.

Hello. Ever feel like locking yourself in the cupboard under the stairs with a box of wine? Never fear. Tough times come to us all, but the innocent news is here to cheer you up. Come out of the cupboard. Come on.

Salad days

If we were going to put our favourite summer salad into a bottle, we would chop up some radishes, tarragon, parsley, spring onions and feta cheese, throw them into the blender and then drink. We would then instantly regret our decision, mainly because it would taste ungood. It's a great salad but it ain't no smoothie.

Thankfully our new seasonal smoothie for summer is more traditional, and has no relation whatsoever to our favourite salad. Cherries and strawberries is delicious - as summery as soaking your sister with a hosepipe, with much less chance of sparking a revenge attack involving a staple gun. We hope you enjoy it.

Smoothies for kids in schools

School. Exalted seat of learning or strange smelling place with a caretaker and some asbestos in the ceiling of the science block? Whatever your memories, we'll bet that you loved parts of your school days, especially that bit when the bell rang at about 3.30pm.

Of course, these days there's a lot more to enjoy at school. I mean, we're not biased or anything but this week about 100 secondary schools up and down the country are starting to stock our smoothies for kids. If that doesn't improve exam results, then heaven knows what will.

Bang a gong

If you are musical in any way shape or form and fancy singing a song or banging some saucepans on the main stage at our summer festival, Fruitstock (6th and 7th August), please consider having a go at our talent search. We promise that it will make you famous and you will end up getting married to Ashton Kutcher or Milla Jovovich. Check www.fruitstock.com for details of how to perform in front of thousands of people.

New people

Lots of new people here at Fruit Towers today. They are called Kevin, Meera, Erin and Sarah. Rather than introduce them all at once, we're splitting them over two weeks. Erin and Meera are first:

• Erin was John Lennon in a former life
• She has eaten dog food
• And she has never seen Star Wars
• Meera is ambidextrous
• She met Rod Stewart's drummer the other day
• She can't speak Chinese

The other bit

And in last week's competition we asked you to identify the mystery pink flowers. The winners are Gill, Annabel and Emma, who all said that they were curcuma alismatifolia (some sort of ginger apparently), and an extra prize goes to Jose, who said "if you don’t know what they are, how will you know you have been sent the right answers?" Spot on, Jose. We still don't really know what they were.