Fruit, Innocent Smoothie and Chocolate Mini Roll, Up escalator Oxford Circus

Steve and I like smoothies, and any smoothie fan knows that Innocent Smoothies are the best smoothies. All fruit, your full 5 a day in a single bottle, with added cheer-inducing amusing bits down the bottle side.

We both like muffins too. Steve is interested in good food, and has an impressive foody background. He once had a French Ex who was a really good cook. The fact that she was a good cook and French meant for a long time I had culinary low self esteem - I hardly dared make him a cup of tea. I still worry when I give him a biscuit. Is it the right sort of biscuit? Will Jaffa Cakes do? Are Jaffa Cakes biscuits or cakes?

He knows the difference between good and bad olive oils, he even does things with balsamic vinegar and salad. This love of good food is further proof that he isn't a proper Northerner. Unfortunately I am, I was brought up to believe that good food meant Vesta Chicken Supreme, Angel Delight, and, yes, Jaffa Cakes. I just smile when he talks about pain au raisin and aioli, and then rearrange my cupboards so he can't see my crappy food.

I used to want a fish tank in the office. This plan was nearly a success, my boss for a while contemplated installing a 17 foot fish tank across the back wall of the Support room. In the end it wasn't the £8,000 price tag that put him off, his Mum thinks it's cruel to keep fish in tanks.

The fish tank does have to do with the smoothies, be patient. You see my colleague Andrew goes to Tesco's mid-morning, and he always asks others in the office if they want him to buy them stuff. I usually ask for crisps, spicy ones. Crisps are my favourite food. Spicy is my favourite flavour. Usually there are other requests for fizzy drinks and crisps. Andrew is PokerStars top email answerer - fast, accurate, clever, and he doesn't show the players he hates them. On a busy shift if I'm in charge I'll contemplate the clear waste in resources of sending clever Andrew to the shops as 'crisp boy.' So a while ago I asked for a crisp machine to be installed in PokerStars office.

The only response was a debate amongst senior management in Canada and Costa Rica about the funny word 'crisps'. No 'Potato Chip Machine' ever materialised in PokerStars London office. I was disappointed yet again. It was just like the fish tank. Only I know there's no cruelty in keeping crisps in a tank!

On further reflection I decided that crisps were not healthy, it was good that PokerStars wouldn't help me stuff my face with them. I decided that PokerStars should provide their staff with fruit instead.

The PokerStars office always has 'fuck off' flowers on the front desk. You know, modern flower installations; never pretty, always stylish, attractive in a poke-your-eye-out kind of way. The company spends a fortune on some top florist to provide these pretentious blooms. I decided that if PokerStars wanted to spend money on natural-shit, why stick to flowers? Why not let us actually eat the nature-stuff instead? I thought they should give their staff free fruit.

Last night I told Steve I was going to start a campaign for free office fruit. I played around with the letters to try to give the campaign the acronym 'F. O.F.F.' Perhaps Free Office Fruit is Fantastic? But I gave up on that, deciding F OFF perhaps wasn't appropriate for a happy, positive, health-giving, campaign? If I told the boss F OFF he might not be inclined to be nice.

Did you know that Innocent Smoothies was awarded 'The Best Place to Work in the UK' by The Guardian? They're a warm, fuzzy, caring company with character, they give staff £1000 every time they have a baby, they have a cheese club, stuff like that.

I considered applying for a job at Innocent, but decided PokerStars are an excellent company too, and they would get even better if they gave staff fruity freebies.

Unfortunately the staff of 'Fruit Towers' (Innocent's head office) seem to be too busy enjoying their cheese club and benefits, to actually do any work. Gutshot, the company Steve works for, had made repeated efforts to stock Innocent smoothies at the bar, but 'Fruit Towers' had failed to deliver. Steve decided that he would have his own workplace campaign too. He would write to Innocent, and try to ensure that his favourite healthy drink was available at the poker club.

We decided there'd be a contest, a challenge, we said, 'First one to succeed before Christmas!' I've no idea how or why Christmas came into it, or what would happen at Christmas if either of us failed, or succeeded? No, I'm not sure, but it was one of those late night, snuggled up in bed, bit giggly conversations; yet also a serious mission for us both! I planned to beat Steve with my fruity mission, I was determined to bring free office fruit to PokerStars London office before Christmas!

I got up for work a couple of hours after my mission was decided, arrived at the office and started to make strong coffee as usual. I noticed that on the kitchen table were bowls of fruit. There were apples, pears, bananas, oranges, satsumas, nectarines - even a melon! I ate an apricot while the coffee brewed. Yes, there were apricots too.

Free fruit had strangely arrived without any fuss, there was just an email from our office manager, Lin, 'Enjoy the fruit!'

I was sure it was a one-off, we sometimes get gifts from players of the FPP Store. So I wrote back to our office manager and my boss, thinking this was an ideal way to start my FOF campaign. I wrote a long email extolling the virtues of office free fruit. I think I said that productivity increases if you eat a bananas. I explained why we must make the office free fruit a regular thing. I told them that I was ready to launch the campaign for office fruit, with a petition and everything!

Lin wrote back, it was just a short email, 'Yes, we plan to repeat the fruit order. We're having free office fruit from now on.'

So that was good. I won!

Steve was impressed at how fast I'd completed the challenge, and he wrote to Fruit Towers as soon as he heard. I won, he knew that, but he didn't want to be too far behind me crossing the finishing line.

I didn't tell Steve that I'd written to Innocent Smoothies myself, a few months ago about the Gutshot smoothie problem. I'd been disappointed with my favourite companies response.

I received this email from Tamsin at Fruit Towers.

'We must apologise for not having replied sooner. We have been absolutely snowed under over the last three weeks, even though its nearly summer. No excuse though, so slap on the wrists for us. It sounds like a problem with one of our stockists so I have Cc…’d in Meera who will chase it up for you.

Meera wrote back, to be fair. Only her email was dull, so I never bothered to send her the Gutshot telephone number she asked for.

But it must have been fruity magic day on Tuesday, just a few hours after sending his email, Steve received this reply -

Hello Stephen,

Thanks for your e-mail. We were really sorry to hear about what happened. I don't work on the sales team, but I've forwarded this to the lovely Mav who will be in touch to try and rearrange some more drinks to be sent and find out what has gone wrong in this instance. Hopefully we can make sure those poker plays are getting their intake of fruit whilst winning some money at the same time!

Take care,

Row

I bet Row and Tamsin and Mav are really nice people (not sure about Meera) I hope they all enjoy their cheese club, and I wonder if they get free fruit too, and have loads of babies at £1000 a pop?

So there you have it, I think this is a happy, magic, story. I think free fruit and Gutshot Smoothies will be a big success.

I also have some Cadbury's Chocolate Mini Rolls; actually a pack of 16 (they were 50% extra free) and these have a 'best before' July 7th. Another recent giggly bedtime chat involved cream cheese. Cream cheese says 'eat within 5 days' - this worries me because I can't get through a pack of cream cheese in 5 days. Steve told me cream cheese really lasts a month, and after that you can use it as glue. I'm not sure... I'm careful with food dates, whereas Steve was once sick after eating a quiche. So I'm not going to eat my 14 remaining Mini Rolls on July 7th, instead I have a better plan for them.

PokerStars gives us free office fruit, Gutshot give Steve smoothies on his bar tab. On July 7th I'm going to put the box of Mini Rolls outside my front door with a, 'Help yourself - these need eating' sign. Because it's July 7th do you think I should add the note, 'Don't worry, it isn't a bomb?'