When Gordon Brown arrived at Innocent Smoothies' HQ in Hammersmith his aides must have known the risks of visiting a venue that is literally full of banana skins.
But the chance to be pictured with a hip and ethical British business — based in a key marginal seat and bouncing back from the recession — was too good to resist.
On paper, Innocent is also the perfect "Brownite" brand, beloved of both young commuters and middle class mothers wary of the healthy-eating lunchbox police.
Add the fact that it gives some profits to charity and you have the perfect answer to David Cameron's Boden-wearing and Ocado-buying offensive. Of course, the PM is a man you'd associate more with Quaker Oats and cod liver oil than cool bottles of mashed-up fruit.
From taxes on bankers' bonuses to the ballooning deficit, "it's for your own good" has been his political mantra for the last three years.
And as he met staff for an ultra-healthy breakfast, Mr Brown looked a little incongruous among the yoga posters, giant jenga games and edgy wall slogans.
For the Labour apparatchiks, the "money shot" came when the PM appeared under a sign that read "Tough times don't last, tough people do — Barry McGuigan." Fortunately for him, the photographers didn't snap him from behind. If they had, they would have seen the sign: "You can't polish a turd ...but you can roll it in glitter."
The young staff were friendly, but things began to go slightly awry when Richard Reed, one of the firm's founders, addressed the vexed issue of tax.
Dressed in the blazer, jeans and trainers uniform of young British entrepreneurs, he told Harriet Harman that it was "bonkers" that his smoothies had VAT slapped on them, while burgers and doughnuts do not.
After the PM left, Mr Reed admitted he didn't like the National Insurance rise either. "It's going to make us look carefully at our payroll," he said.
More ominously, he also revealed the firm was soon heading back to its original home in Notting Hill ...a banana's throw from smoothie David Cameron.
