Mott Green

Nothing to do with bikes, everything to do with something ever close to Sideburn thinking - good people who get good stuff done.

The other day, listening to BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, I was introduced to this bloke from the States, Mott Green, who'd fallen in love with Grenada in the southern Caribbean. He ended up living there and managed, against all odds - heat, humidity, lack of infrastructure and the rest of it - to set up a small factory, a co-operative, making high-quality organic chocolate, at the same time ensuring a very short chain between farmer and consumer, giving the farmers the best deal possible.

As a talented engineer, he got his hands dirty, inventing, installing and maintaining much of the plant necessary to make the venture work. Blimey, he even got an old-time sail-ship to take tens of thousands of bars of his award-winning chocolate across the Atlantic to Holland, where it was distributed by volunteers on bicycles.

Mott Green was killed in June just gone, electrocuted while repairing machinery at his factory. His energy lives on in the inspiration he's given to others. MP