The battle of the imperial bananas began in earnest yesterday, but only after a court power failure caused chaos. The bench, barristers and a circus of imperial weights and measures experts shifted boxes of law books half a mile - or a little less than a kilometre - uphill to the Sunderland city council chamber for the start of a far-reaching EU test case. Drawing on sections of Magna Carta, Latin tags and the fuel problems of his lawyer's Bentley, greengrocer Steve Thoburn is hoping to defend the traditional British right to ignore the metric system.
"This dates back to the 1864 Metric Weights and Measures Act," said his barrister Mr Michael Shrimpton, a constitutional expert who said EU insistence on metric-only sales rode roughshod over parliament.
"We have always tolerated eccentricity in this country and if a customer wants to go to Mr Thoburn and order 0.45359337 kilos of bananas instead of a pound, that act says he is perfectly entitled to do so."
Mr Thoburn's stand is for pounds and ounces devotees to be allowed the same flexibility, which his market stall in Sunderland allows them to do. He denies two counts of selling bananas in imperial weights only to undercover staff of Sunderland city council, which has brought the prosecution.
Ms Eleanor Sharpston QC, for the council, said that the case was about enforcing the will of parliament, rather than Brussels, and avoiding confusion in shoppers' minds.
"This prosecution is entirely brought to enforce a valid act of parliament which is the law of the land," she said.
The case hinges on whether the EU's 1994 units of measurement regulations take precedence over the 1985 Weights and Measures Act. The case continues.