Breakfast with Gordon

It's not every week you get invited to have breakfast with Gordon Brown. So our Richard didn't take his invite lightly. He put on his best clothes, brushed his hair and went to Gordon's house to talk about entrepreneurship (and to suggest that Gordon switches the electricity supply at Number 11 to one of the renewable providers. It didn't go down that well.) Other guests included Terence Conran, Lord Foster the architect, Paul Smith and Jonathan Ive the iPod inventor, but Tony didn't come round because he doesn't like the way Gordon does his eggs.

Robots with Harry

Check out Harry's robot. He made it using one of the boxes that our smoothies for kids come in. He looks pretty happy about it all.

Hats with bottles

Our Supergran project got a bit bigger today. We took delivery of about 60,000 hats that the people at ExtraCare and Age Concern have been helping us to get knitted. And we also heard that we'll be doing Supergran in France as well, working with a charity called Les petits-frères des pauvres. You'll be able to buy our behatted French bottles in Café Berts and Grande Epicerie.

If you live in London, get your knitting needles out and join us for a cup of tea and a spot of little bobble hat knitting at the EAT café on the South Bank, by the Royal Festival Hall, this Thursday (24th November) from 3 til 5pm. Fear not if you don't live in the Big Smoke, we'll be knitting in Birmingham and Manchester too.

Join us for a good old yarn on:

Monday 28th November between 10.30 and 11.30am at EAT, Brindley Place, Birmingham
Tuesday 29th November between 3 and 5pm at EAT on Spinningfields Square, Manchester

If you don't knit, we'll have experts on hand to show you how. And if you never really wanted to learn, we'd still love it if you came along for a natter.

Click here to check out this week's Hats of the Week - there are eight of them.

Smoothies with vodka

A man from Goldie Lookin' Chain (pictured), the rude Welsh hip-hop collective, likes our smoothies. He told the Guardian that he didn't take any health supplements or vitamins, but instead he's into "getting a pint glass, pouring in two of those innocent smoothies and filling the rest up with vodka. That way, you get all your fruit and veg for the day, and you get p***ed." Rock'n'roll.

What do you reckon?

We've been thinking about blogs. Specifically, we've been thinking that maybe we should write one. So if we wrote a blog, what sort of stuff would you be interested in? Do you read any good blogs that could teach us a thing or two? Or do you reckon we should stick to making smoothies?

Your thoughts and blog recommendations will be gratefully received at hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk

The winners of last week's competition

Last week we showed you a photograph of the Shrimp sitting atop an orange cow and asked you why he might have been driven to do such a thing. The majority of you thought that this had something to do with him wanting to be an urban cowboy, which was, unfortunately, the wrong answer (his scooter had broken down). In the end the winners were picked according to the quality and density of cow-related puns in their entries. Our congratulations (and some nice smoothies) are on their way to:

Damon J
Simon P
Clare B
Kate R
Diana W

We found out a few things this week. There are more chickens than people on Earth. Coconuts kill more people than sharks. And there's no 'e' in West Bridgford.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Imagine a world where nothing ever changes. Where the sun shines for 12 hours and 43 minutes every day. Where people all drive the same cars, have the same haircuts and all enjoy the sweet blue eyed soul of Marti Pellow's Wet Wet Wet. Imagine how dull that might be. Well, we're here to save you, in the shape of our guest smoothie recipe. It's changed again. Just a day or so ago it had rhubarb in it, but now we've decided to get all wintry and the little guest bottle now contains festive fruits and spices. Get it before it runs out.

Surf and turf

Why is Shrimp riding the cow?

Is it because

A) He thinks that's how you milk them?
B) He wants to be an urban cowboy?
C) His moped is at the repair shop?

Send your answers to hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk - three winners will get a case of drinks.

Things to make and do

Making stuff is great. You start off with some drinking straws, sellotape and an old cardboard box and before you know it you've got a scale model of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. We like making things, so we were very happy to see the craft that went into this big sticker for the back of Esther's Mini. And we were just as happy when we received our first proper designer-knitted Supergran Hats of the Week. Orla Kiely, who makes posh handbags and other nice things, has knitted us a couple of beauties. Click here to have a look at them.

P.S. If you'd like to get involved in our Supergran project, but need a bit of help learning how to knit, you can click here for some handy videos on how to cast on, knit and purl. But don't get any funny ideas about making their baby bibs or ponchos, we need all the hats we can get.

Crazy name, crazy guys

Last week, inspired by Buddha's Bap and Bagel Bar, we asked you to send us the names of places where you buy our drinks that have vaguely dubious names. We've picked out our top three, which in no particular order are...

Pizza The Action
Shot In The Dark (it's a coffee shop - geddit?)
The Flying Fortress Of Love

Emma, Caroline and Tim win the goods. Well done everybody.

There are three things for sure in this life - death, taxes and more stuff about fainting goats (check the link at the bottom).

Hit the road

Put down that pencil/cake/harmonica and open your ears, for we have something good to tell you. We are about to embark upon our November tour, where we will be delivering thousands of free drinks to offices and workplaces all over, from Govan and Gosforth to Chatham and St Austell.

You may be asking yourself the following question - "how do I stand a chance of getting some of that free stuff?" Well, the answer is simple - click here, fill in the form and we'll stick you on the list. We'll be starting on 14th November so there's no time to lose.

Spot the van

Now it's not like we're only going to give you one chance to get free drinks. Oh no. We also want you to keep a lookout for our vans as they wend their way along the road. If you spot one, please send us in a picture. At the end of the roadshow we'll pick 20 and send the people who took them a case of drinks each. Yes, it's that simple.

There will also be a special prize for the funniest/most artful shot - send all entries to hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk and stick 'spot the van' in the subject box (files under 500kB please, or our server will blow up). (Secret tip - we will be in the following places over the next week or so - Hamilton, Edinburgh, Govan, Toryglen, Derby, Leicester, Grantham and West Bridgeford.)

Brassica monkeys

We asked you a few questions recently, one of which was to tell us which fruit or veg you thought was the healthiest. We are pleased to report that you chose our favourite, the mighty broccoli, with blueberries, cranberries and ginger giving it a close run for its money. As well as being healthy, broccoli is also very confusing. According to The Oxford Companion To Food, it's "one of the most puzzling members of the cabbage family. The trouble is that, although shopkeepers and shoppers can usually distinguish it easily from the cauliflower, botanists cannot." Well, for any botanists reading, broccoli is the green one whilst cauliflower is sort of off-white with green leaves around the bottom.

A hat in hell's chance

It is time to bow down at the altar of the Hat Of The Week. First up, many apologies to Kate's gran who failed to get the recognition for her pumpkin creation last week. This week it's a kind of good hat/bad hat thing, and features yet another hat from our Anthony's mum. Praise the Lord, and click here to have a look.

Goatally amazing

You can't keep a good fainting goat down, unless it faints http://www.rfaintingfarm.com/faintshots.htm

We'd also like to take this opportunity to say hello to everyone at Buddha's Bap and Bagel Bar. Crazy name, crazy baps. If you buy your smoothies from somewhere with a dafter name, let us know at hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk and the best three names will win a case of drinks.

We apologise in advance if you buy your drinks from a place called The Coffee Shop or something like that. You're probably not going to win the prize. But you could always make something up.

Hello and welcome to another week of mildly important news from Fruit Towers.

Breakfast pie

Breakfast is the best meal of the day, unless someone's made shepherd's pie for tea. But then we suppose you could eat shepherd's pie for breakfast if you needed to. Not sure how well it goes with cornflakes. Anyway, enough of this. Read this article from The Times about drinking our smoothies for breakfast and you may never have to grapple with this complex question again.

Nature's finest

You know how we make healthy drinks? And you know how we like to talk about them and tell you where you can get them in this email? And you know how that can get a bit boring sometimes? Well, here's something to remedy any boredom that you might be feeling. Watch the clip about the fainting goats here.

It fills us with wonder.

Hat's all we've got

It's week three of Hat Of The Week and we are already running low on hat-based puns for this section's headline. But we are drowning in little woolly hats, and have selected another fine crown for this week's prize - click here to have a look at the little chap. We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who sent in hats last week, especially Ulrika, who sent us 40 hats all the way from Germany. Danke.

Errors and omissions

We'd like to point out to all subscribers that we are not in David Cameron's camp (wherever that might be. Maybe it's in the woods?). All we were doing in last week's news was pointing out that he likes our drinks. We are proud to be the UK's leading politically neutral smoothie company and look forward to many years of independence from all prevailing doctrines, though if anyone fancies slipping us some cash for saying "David Blunkett is great/innocent/going to get away with it again", we will listen to such requests with an open mind.