I’ve always rather admired Innocent. I know they’re horribly over-exposed, and I suspect that beneath every halo must lie some darker truths. But MT has a lot of affection for them, not least because we wrote one of the first articles about the company way back in 2000. And - althought the credit crunch has reportedly set them looking for a new investor - I think they are well placed to do well in the downturn.
 
I have an abiding memory of Richard Reed’s appearance at a round-table discussion we did at Claridges years back on people management. The table was filled with plenty of suits, including Digby Jones. Richard was late, finally striding in wearing a cheesecloth shirt that was slashed open to the waist, some baggy linen pants and flip flops (I swear fellow-diner Ruth Spelman, then of Investors In People, nearly swooned).

I also recall bumping into all three of them in an Italian airport, when Adam Balon confided in me that they’d just been coerced into their first 'two for one' offer with a supermarket, and had calculated they probably lost money on every sale made. I doubt if they get suckered into any such bad deals these days.

The've been doing very well, too, doubling their revenues in each of the last four years - and they give 10% of profits to charity. I was also right behind them in their experiment to sell their smoothies via McDonalds. Why shouldn’t the McDonalds demographic be given access to their products, despite the protestations of all those po-faced Maccy-D haters who gave them a hard time?

Now it seems that sales of Innocent's smoothies may have fallen by as much as half in recent weeks, and the firm has revealed that it is looking for a new investor. A minority stake in what has hitherto been a fiercely independent outfit is reportedly up for grabs for around £35m, in order, says Reed,  to finance the next stage of growth. But even without this cash  they’ve already branched out beyond smoothies and their this Water drinks into food, with Innocent Veg Pots. I had one the other night, and besides the fact that the punnet isn’t recyclable and it gets bloody hot in the microwave, it’s not bad at all - if a wee bit pricey at £3.49. Think of them as yuppie Pot Noodles. Definitely not 'the slag of all snacks'.

I’ve always been left slightly cold by the matey packaging notes on Innocent stuff. But I am a sour old fart. And even if the chatty, faux intimacy irks me ever so slightly, it’s been widely imitated and will serve them very well during the downturn. Innocent exudes an inclusive warmth that many big, conventionally-marketed rivals would kill for, and is run by a trio of seriously clever and committed entrepreneurs. We wish them well.

In today's bulletin:
John Lewis and Waitrose sweat as sales plunge
New oil price boon for motorists
Editor's blog: Innocent's Tasty Pot of cash
Up your game in a downturn, with YouTube
MT's Week in 60 Seconds
Win two FREE business-class bmi flights

So, the Germans have drifted into recession: the Federal Statistics office says that German GDP contracted 0.5% in the third quarter, after a 0.4% fall in the second. But before we all get overwhelmed with a sense of schadenfreude, it might be sensible to remember a few vital statistics:

1) The German trade balance for the last twelve months was $280bn in the black – we were $190bn in the red.
2) The Germans are running a current account balance of plus $270bn for the last year, whereas the UK in the second quarter was $83bn in the red – and this figure is going to get a lot worse.
3) If you had to place a bet on a country that will weather the storm, it might well be Germany. If you make BMWs and Mercedes Benz rather than Fiestas or Puntos, then you can afford to sell them for a bit less and still make a decent margin.

More broadly, you could argue that the Germans have had very little truck with what you might call ‘gangster capitalism’. And last week at Porsche they had some sweet revenge on those gangster locusts, when they pulled a fast one on VW-shorting hedge funds. 

Nevertheless, contracting they are. But there are two things that have yet to be hit by the German downturn: saving and drinking beer. The Germans are still refusing to shun the stein of foaming lager, and despite the fact that prices have gone up by nearly 8%, due to increased raw material costs, they are still quaffing an annual average of 112 litres per head – the same level as 2007. (In the UK, sales of beer are nose-diving as we all take refuge in Lidl own-brand super-strength cider.)

The other thing is saving – something we’ve almost entirely forgotten how to do in the UK. Show me a British child who still knows what a piggy bank is – if you give a child a tenner these days, they normally respond with: ‘Can I use your credit card? There’s something I really need to buy online. Now.’ Anyway, the Germans’ savings ratio has actually gone up to an amazing 11.3% of disposable income in the first half of this year. They know the value of saving for a rainy day or a new BMW.

Mind you, if our interest rates fall to less than 1%, it’s hard to see the attraction of saving anything. Might as well fiddle – and spend – while Rome burns. 

In today's bulletin:
BT pulls plug on 10,000 jobs
Bank backtracks as economic clouds gather
Editor's blog: No cause for schadenfreude
Your call could not be answered
MT's Little Ray of Sunshine: Inside the mind of an entrepreneur

To the National Theatre to see Ralph Fiennes as Oedipus. This is one of London’s hottest tickets, but it goes without saying that the evening is no barrel of laughs. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could turn Oedipus into a feel-good production – the play is, after all, the tale of a man who unwittingly kills his dad, shacks up with his mother (producing four children) and then when he discovers the error of his ways puts his own eyes out and is banished. Nevertheless, I’d thoroughly recommend you seek out a ticket: you come out feeling thoroughly purged, as was the intention of Sophocles when he wrote it two and a half thousand years ago. He knew the value of catharsis.

What did strike me, though - and I wasn’t the only one in the audience to be muttering this as we cleared the aisles - were the parallels between plague-afflicted Thebes and the modern-day economic woes that we’re experiencing across the world. (I noticed the economist Roger Bootle in the Telegraph yesterday used the word plague to describe the current global contagion.)  The moaning dismay and fear of the Greek Chorus could have been 15 Robert Pestons bemoaning our fate as he does each morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. ‘Ah me! What countless woes are mine? / All our host is in decline.’

The reason Thebes is suffering is that the god Apollo has put a hex on the place because Oedipus is its king and his wayward behaviour has brought disaster on his city and his family. Your hubris leads you to err from the path of righteousness – even without knowing it – and you pay the price. Underlying the whole thing is a sense that life is highly precarious and everyone feels desperately insecure.

But don’t let this get you down. The ancient Greeks didn’t. There are ways to lance the boil and start out on the road to a cure and better times. Realisation that you’ve made an appalling mistake is the start. I’d be slightly hesitant before drawing any parallels with our own predicament but George W being banished back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas – albeit without using one of Barbara’s brooches to spike his eyes – may well be a turning point.  

In today's bulletin:
Now house sales hit 30-year low
Vodafone to cut £1bn costs as sales slow
Editor's blog: The City's Oedipus complex
Crunch puts the mochas on Starbucks profits
PR headache for Ryanair after bird trouble