My family’s in the prune business, a business that my grandfather (Stanford, ’42) started and ran successfully through three generations. It exists today, and still has offices in Santa Clara Valley, though the operations are about three hours north.
A few decades ago, John Cleese was approached by representatives of the prune industry, thinking that he would be a terrific spokesperson in advertisements and so forth. Apparently, Cleese was really keen to do it (after all, it is the most humorous all fruits…), but his manager talked him out of it with some version of a “you’re-not-getting-any-younger-and-people-already-think-you’re-old-and-this-prune-thing-will-put-you-over-the-brink.” Too bad…