Sick of Scrabble? Cheesed off with chess? Craig Brown has the answer

After barely ten days of enforced isolation, you will already have grown sick to death of traditional board games.

Unless you are one of those players who feverishly re-jigs his letters while all the other plays are having their go, Scrabble plods along far too slowly, and everyone gets irritated. Chess lacks levity, turning even the most carefree player into Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And it is a well-known fact that no family has ever survived a game of Monopoly without at least one member upturning the board and stomping off in a huff..

But my own favourite game should see you through the current crisis and beyond. Not only that, but, unlike, say, chess, it requires no board or little pieces, it makes everyone happy, and it can be enjoyed by any number of players. It is called The Fruit Game.

INSTRUCTIONS: Each player picks the name of a different fruit – e.g. “Banana”, “Apple”, “Strawberry” – and announces their choice out loud.

One player starts the ball rolling by saying the fruit of another player three times in a row – “Banana! Banana! Banana!” – before that person has managed to say “Banana!” once.

If the first player succeeds, then the failed player – in this case the Banana – becomes the caller. It is then his or her job to say another person’s fruit three times – “Strawberry! Strawberry! Strawberry!” – before they have managed say it once. However, if the Banana person or the Strawberry person succeeds in saying their fruit once before the caller has said it three times, then the caller has to try again, shouting out either another fruit, or the same fruit, three times.

And so on, ad infinitum. It’s funny how even the simplest game is almost impossible to explain. Small wonder that no-one has ever read to the end of the Monopoly instructions, which is why every family plays by different rules. But the Fruit Game is as simple as can be – so simple, indeed, that it can be enjoyed by children of two, as long as they have their wits about them.

The greatest players of the game know that surprise is of the essence. Whenever it falls to you to be caller, you should wait a while before shouting out a fruit, and, when you do, you should deftly insert it into what others imagine to be a normal topic of conversation. For instance: “Does anyone think it’s likely to rain TOMATO-TOMATO-TOMATO!” *

Some experienced players believe that picking a fruit with a long name – Pomegranate, for example – gives one a head start. Personally, I prefer to plump for a tongue-twisting fruit, so that whoever tries to shout it three times is bound to stumble at the last hurdle. Most people find “KUMQUAT” particularly tricky to say three times, very fast. Over the years, you will have learnt to develop your own little techniques in order to emerge victorious.

I have been playing this delightful game, on and off, for over forty years. Unlike Scrabble or Chess, it proceeds at a very fast pace, and never ends in tears. No-one really minds losing because, seconds later, they will be winning.

The Fruit Game can go on for as long or as little as you want. My son was introduced to it at the age of two, and he will soon be thirty. The friend of mine who taught him to play – a prominent antiquarian book dealer – has continued the same game with him for over quarter of a century. Though they may not see each other for a year at a time, whenever they meet one will shout, “ORANGE-ORANGE-ORANGE!” before the other has had a chance to scream back “ORANGE!”.

I occasionally dream that on my death bed my friends and family will gather round for one last round of The Fruit Game. I pray that if I have chosen to be Raspberry, they will have the grace to say the words “R-a-s-p-b-e-r-ry……R-a-s-p-b-e-r-r-y….R-a-s-p-” very, very slowly, so that, with my final breath, I will be able to croak, “RASPBERRY!”, and thus go to my grave with the requisite haze of self-satisfaction.

Craig Brown’s brilliant new book on The Beatles, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, is out now