Cheese Amnesty

 

On the whole, though, it was more of a cheese-based inquiry than would otherwise be the case. After all, we all know about the increasing number of murders committed by wielders of some of the more obscure local cheeses, compared with the more usual supermarket cheddars and similar mass-produced dairy products.

The use of Stilton has long been recognised as a rather British form of regicide, with - of course – Richard of York’s final despairing cry of ‘My Kingdom for a Krackawheat’ when faced with the overwhelming number of Stilton rounds massed against him by Henry VI on the field at the battle of Wakefield.

Still, the use of Wensleydale by the Parliamentarian side to rid the country of Charles I is familiar, despite the poor quality of contemporary history teaching, to most school-age worker units, even though many of them will have little or no idea just what sort of computer game character a Wensleydale is and just when the Roundheads won X-Factor.

However, since the last cheese amnesty saw a record number of unlicensed wedges of Sage Derby handed in to police stations all across the country as well as some rather lethal Gorgonzola successfully defused by the Anti-Cheese Terrorism Squad in Bilston only last week, there are some encouraging signs that cheese-related mayhem may – at last – be on the wane since the successful capture by the Metropolitan Police of the leaders of one of the capital’s most notorious importers of illegal Brie.