Horatio Hepplewhite, a cabbage farmer from Lincolnshire has resorted to holding out a begging bowl in the streets of London, following this year's catastrophic cabbage crop failure.
"I was expecting to harvest about a hundred tons of cabbages," Hepplewhite explained. "But with the cabbage blight, I've only been left with about six or seven cabbages, and they are all underdeveloped and stunted. It's enough to make your hair curl. Or turn white, or whatever hair does when you find your life unravelling."
Describing himself as 'an alpha male,' Hepplewhite was determined that the cabbage shortage wasn't going to beat him, so he immediately set about improving his lot by hanging out dressed as a tramp in Soho's Golden Square, holding out a begging bowl with a placard saying: "Impoverished Cabbage Farmer - Stricken Down By Cabbage Blight - Please Give Generously."
Hepplewhite told a Skoob News reporter that the begging exercise showed promise, but it wasn't going to compensate for the cabbage shortage.
"I made sixteen pounds and seventy six pence yesterday," he said. "It isn't enough to pay my train fare back home to Lincolnshire, so I'll have to sleep rough tonight with all the weirdos and fruitloops in Soho. I can see I'm going to have to up my game to aggressive begging, or street robbery, or something. I'll do whatever it takes. I'm not going to let this cabbage shortage beat me. I'm made of sterner stuff than that."
Cabbage futures were in freefall on the LSE.
Most investors are putting their money into beetroot.
Apparently.
More as we get it.
