I guess a more serious question would be, was this evidence of black market fruit? Was food smuggled into the UK during the war, and if so how much? I mean I gather there was black market food.
Saw this information about bananas in UK in the black market cigar thread. There was an occasion where a raffle for a single banana raised £5, then a healthy weekly wage, says Mr Charman, and another occasion where £4 worth of tickets were sold for the raffling of a single onion. BBC News - Should we bring back rationing? Maybe they were making a joke about the scarcity of bananas by saying the sighting was a mystery. I saw a Bob Hope USO skit that had two rifle toting MPs carry a steak on stage.
Evening Despatch Wednesday 27th November 1940 Newcastle Journal Friday 29th November 1940 W.Heath Robinson The Sketch 12th June 1940
When I had my tonsils out in about 1943/4, I was given a banana, and a lecture about the bravery of the men who brought it over. I have since found that crews of merchant ships bought fruit back, both for their families and children's homes and hospitals. They also came back with tinned goods, which were distributed among the family and neighbours, many had to slip the dock gate copper a ten bob note to get the stuff out.
This reminds me of a story told in my family. During or maybe just after the war my great Uncle, who was a navigator in RAF Costal Command, managed to bring back some bananas (from Gibraltar I think), and one of these took pride of place on the sideboard until it was so ripe it had to eaten. My mother who had been a young child when war started had almost forgotten what bananas were so wondered what all the fuss was !
I can remember getting the occasional "Canadian" Apple This was handed out a school ,in addition to the spoonful of cod-liver oil and malt . Not sure of date probably 44/45. In around 46 our neighbour who was a Docker sold black-market fruit and nuts.
Norman Longmate has an account of a Gloucester teenager winning a banana in a raffle. It had arrived with an Australian airman. It was chopped up so that each member of the family could have a taste. The skin was placed outside the house in the road so that they could watch the bafflement of passers-by (How we lived then, Arrow Books 1974, Page 146). This sounds a very similar story. Bananas and other luxuries still sometimes arrived in food parcels sent to people fortunate to have relatives living in the USA or in some part of the Empire
