I was sitting with Mrs Patmore from Downton Abbey in my car outside Langley station in Berkshire. This wasn’t a dream – this was real. To be fair, it wasn’t Mrs Patmore, it was my friend Lesley Nicol, who plays Mrs Patmore. Anyway, there we were, shooting the breeze on matters various, like our childhoods and stuff, when she mentioned something called a Jubbly. She has fond memories of this frozen drink/lolly offering. And I think we all have strong feelings about this kind of frozen drink/lolly offering from our childhood.

I base this very much on anecdote rather than data. My limited research has been inspired by an email I received from a Guardian reader called Bloss, from Marple near Stockport. Vastly overestimating my influence over anything, she implored me to use my influence to get Rose’s Lime Marmalade back on supermarket shelves. Her husband loves it, you see. She can get him Rose’s Lemon & Lime Marmalade, but for him, if she’ll pardon the slight pun, this just doesn’t cut it.

To her husband I’d make the following points. First, while I like a man who knows what he wants, I’d suggest he’s a bit of a fusspot and should have a word with himself. How dramatic can the difference be between lemon and lime, and just lime? Second, I hope he knows how lucky he is to have a wife who cares enough about her bloke’s breakfast preserve preferences to stop at nothing in her search for his precious lime-only product.

For a while, she says, she could........

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