On this day in history, the state of Prussia ceased to exist, Mrs Iglesias gave birth to Julio Jr and Stormy Night won Best in Show at The Scottish Shetland Sheepdog Show. You should know these things.

Hello sports fans

The phone has been ringing hot, burning up our sports desk this week. According to one reporter*, the Irish rugby team will be drinking our smoothies before the big game this Saturday (apparently they drank them before playing France). What’s more, our little bottles will be getting their first caps, as our drinks are now available in Ireland's biggest stadium, Croke Park. And in other news, the football mecca that is Stamford Bridge has just started stocking our drinks. Mr Hiddink’s first decent signing.

We run the Alps

Ah, the Alps. Home of good chocolate, secure banks and Hannibal’s favourite place to take his elephants for a stroll. We’ve been selling our drinks in Switzerland and Austria for a while now, where we’re the No.1 and No. 2 smoothie respectively. But this week it gives us great pleasure to announce that not only are our smoothies now sold in Liechtenstein (the world’s smallest German-speaking country), they have also immediately become the No.1 smoothie across the land. Okay, so technically Liechenstein only has an area of 62 square miles, technically it’s one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world and technically there is only one Co-Op there. But since we’re the only smoothie being sold we’re claiming it as our own. Which technically means we run the Alps.

Bouncy locks

Our conquest of the Alps might also have something to do with our Adam, flicking his locks, rubbing his lucky coat and posing on van bonnets whenever he sets foot on Alpine soil. Only last week, he was interviewed for Austrian magazine News – Oesterreichs groesstes Nachrichtenmagazin where allegedly they made him jump off the van for this fetching shot. Photographic evidence indicates however that said pose is a smidge too practiced, a.k.a the whole Tom Cruise jumping on the sofa thing. Wannabe poster boy of crushed Alpine fruit or a failed audition piece for a shampoo advert – we’ll let you be the judge.

Ladies who lunch

The good people at Woman magazine featured our veg pots as part of their Lose weight at Lunchtime diet. They rated our veg pots as a healthy, low fat, tasty lunch alternative to high calorie soggy sandwiches and also recommended smoothies as a good breakfast option. If you don’t have time to stand in the newsagents, slyly reading magazines on your lunchbreak, you can click here whenever you’d like some nutritional wisdom from our very own Dr. Shilps.

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This week’s news is a bit like wearing a fake fur coat in a sauna round at the donkey sanctuary. Hot, exciting and a little bit itchy.

Pans at the ready...

Judging hats steady. And….go. This week, you get to be Gregg. Or John. Or Simon. Or that one with the funny eyebrows from Dancing on Ice. Whichever reality TV judging style takes your fancy, really. We’ve picked our favourite innocent Masterchef hopefuls and the next bit is down to you. Who comes along for the cook off? Who stays at home, weeping big fat chef tears all over their seared tuna? You decide. Just have a quick read here and then vote for your favourite. Oh the power. The power.

Big and special

Cast your mind back a couple of weeks. There was mention of blackboards, pineapples and butterfly kicks. Ring any bells? What if we were to say “special guest”? No? Well, not to worry because we do tend to ramble on a bit sometimes and occasionally repeat ourselves. So this is just to let you know that our new special guest recipe pineapples, blueberries & ginger is now available in big cartons as well as little bottles. That’s big cartons, as well as little bottles. Bigger cartons too, and also the little bottles. In shops, in big cartons. Sorry if we’ve already mentioned it but we’d rather you knew than didn’t.

Manager’s specials

Tannoy announcements are all part of the rich folk tapestry that is the weekly shop. Whether it’s a “Code 5 alert” or just “Derek to aisle 14 – we have a pork pie down”, they help make the trolley dash a richer, more rewarding experience. So here’s our very own innocent tannoy announcement, where we highlight our favourite deals of the week, on our drinks and other fine comestibles.

Bing Bong. This week, Sainsbury’s have our big OJ cartons on offer at 2 for £3 as well as 25% off tartar-reducing dog treats and posh shaving cream. Bing Bong.

Bing Bong. Over at Tesco, oven cleaner is half price, our big cartons are on offer at 2 for £4 and there’s 50p off cheese slices, and a BOGOF* on Hula Hoop multipacks. 2 loaves of bread for a quid from the bakery too. Bing Bong.

Looks like it’s tartar-reducing crisp sandwiches for tea then.

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* BOGOF = buy one get one free. You knew that already didn’t you?


11th February 2009

Hello and welcome to a world filled with love. No haters, no doom, no spud guns. Just respect for your fellow human beings and a little bit of nookie where appropriate, because it is almost Valentine’s after all. Kiss kiss.

Everybody needs somebody

As mentioned above, love is in the air, hanging around like a big pink cloud, making single people gag on its rose scented fumes. Yes, Valentine’s week can be a right pain if you’re not involved in some sort of relationship and haven’t got anyone to take you out to Le Fromage D’Or for a tidy feed on Saturday night. Which is where we come in. We’d like you to post a love-seeking ad on our blog. And we’re going to choose the best one to go on one of our labels. This blog post has plenty of tips for what we’re after, and also some excellent photos of examples from lovelorn innocent people. Click here to spread the love.

The price is alright

We’ve been talking about the old days a bit this week, mainly because we are approaching our 10th birthday (28th April 2009). Remember the time we got that van stuck between the bollards? Remember the time Richard had a wastepaper basket fire, tried to put it out with his feet and got his foot stuck in the bin? Remember when this was number one? And this? What a rollercoaster ride it’s been. And then we talked about how much our smoothies cost, and the fact that the price has been pretty constant. Now, this is either really stupid or really clever (you decide which), but whatever the answer, if we’d followed inflation, GDP, the Retail Price Index and all of those other things, one of our bottles would cost between £2.20-£2.70. But they don’t. In fact, the RRP is £1.79 - the same price as we launched with in 1999. Maybe we missed a trick.

Oil your pans

There is still time to become an innocent Masterchef. You have until the end of the week to visit this blog post, read the instructions and post your all time favourite recipe, featuring plenty of veg. Top marks will be awarded if you manage to include one of our veg pots in your recipe, and if you can deliver the recipe in the verbal/written style of Gregg/John you will get maximum bonus points. We’ll film the final here at Fruit Towers, and we are inching closer to establishing contact with Gregg, but if we can’t get him along to judge, we’ll try Jamie and Delia instead. Get cooking.

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Ready? Sitting comfortably? Needle and thread at the ready? Right then…“Snow news is good news.” Ho ho. Guffaw. Now please sew your sides back up and let’s get on with it.

All white now

This week got off to a funny start. Monday wasn’t rubbish, it wasn’t brilliant, it was just sort of all white (sorry). Yes, it snowed, right out of the sky, just like in the movies. About 30 of us managed to plough through it, get to the office and then spent most of our morning lunchbreak blindsiding respected colleagues with high velocity iceballs, building snowmen and planning where to sleep in case we got blizzarded in. We posted our snowman art on the blog and lots of you did the same, so we thought we’d make a little competition of it. Check out three generations of snow people here, upload your snow sculpture photos here and our top 3 favourites will win an extra chilled box of our finest.

Masterchef – it could be you

We like Masterchef. And we’re still trying to work out which incarnation we like best. Is it Loyd Grossman, with his colour coded kitchens and considered judgments? Or is it Greg and John’s “I’d quite happily put my face in it” current version of the show? The jury is out, but we thought it would be good to have a go ourselves, so here you are. We challenge you to become our Veg Pot Chef of the Year, and we’ll try to convince Greg or John (or maybe even Loyd) to pop down to judge. Maybe. All you have to do is follow the instructions here in this blog post – then we’ll pick our best three chefs, get them into Fruit Towers and let battle commence. Click here if you fancy having a go.

Our man in Kenya

30 something, slightly pasty, IT professional with strong Wolverhampton accent. WLT travel, learn and help where he can. Not a classified from The Dudley Evening News but a decent description of our JT who is currently out in Kenya. He’s working with Excellent Development, one of the NGOs that the innocent foundation supports, helping them with their IT systems and seeing for himself the work that they do. Being good with computers and that, he’s posting regular updates on the blog while he’s out there – follow his progress here.

Are you one of the eleven?

It’s a long shot but it just might work. We’re looking for the eleven people who first received our news in email form, back in Autumn 1999. If you think you’re one of them, please email our Dan. Thank you very much.

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