One banana, two banana, three banana, four...how to banana professionally | Jack Marshall's column

I say fruit bowl, it’s exclusively a banana bowl at the moment. But there’s method in my potassium-based madness. And that method is all about timing. Because timing makes or breaks bananas - it’s a very unique and tricksy fruit in that way.

When you first buy bananas, they’re likely to be at least tinged with a hint of green. This is bad. Green bananas are the devil’s work. They taste awful, they’re too firm, they kind of smell like leaves, and they’re evil. If you eat green bananas, stop reading right now and go away.

Bananas are like pensions: you invest now for later reward and not many people fully understand them. A banana purchased on Monday will be useless until at least the weekend (and, even then, it’s touch-and-go). You have to look at your banana bowl as a savvy expenditure.

In this sense, bananas are a pretty unique fruit. With apples, you can eat them the day you buy them and they’re great. Strawberries? The sooner the better. Same with raspberries. Grapes? Crack on. Oranges? Massively overrated, but no time-investment requirement.

Which brings us back to my banana bowl: my banana bowl is a professional’s banana bowl. In it are three stages of banana: the green abominations which are silly little disgraces, the budding prospects just finding their feet, and the banana bowl superstars.

When you get a banana just right, you get a banana superstar, aka the best fruit. Despite the fact that the last two people I spoke to about this stone-cold science fact reacted with withering derision, I remain unbowed - properly cared-for and nurtured bananas are the kings of the fruit bowl.

People just don’t want to invest the time in their banana bowl cultivation techniques. They want quick fixes, they want tinned pineapple and sliced peaches in syrup. Easy. But is the payoff anywhere near as good? No chance.

Invest in your banana-rearing techniques, good citizens, and the fruit gods will smile down upon you. All power to your peeling elbow.