The odds were stacked against Maris Piper. The best chipper has to be the King Edward and there you're competing against someone very well connected. Little potatoes - nice idea as a summer salad tuber, but you're taking on the Establishment again. Jersey Royals. The aristocracy has almost cornered the foodstuffs market. There's the Earl of Sandwich with his refined butties; Earl Grey who successfully combined a tea with a deodorant.
Of course, we now recognise Maris Piper as the undisputed best mashing potato, pound for pound. Not to say that Ms Piper wouldn't have seen darker days. The 1970s nearly saw her potato completely blown out of the water by Smash, the instant mash, which threatened to make the potato masher a future archaeological curio.
'She'll never come to anything.' That's what they said of Maris Piper when she was young. Up in the headmistress's study she's constantly having to answer for her absenteeism; caught on numerous occasions breeding varieties of potato behind the bike sheds. 'Why can't you be a more adjusted teenager?' the headmistress would ask, 'and take up something like snooker?'