BRITAIN has produced some of the world's noblest martyrs. There's St Edmund, the ninth century Christian king, tied to a tree and shot with arrows by Danish heathens till his body was 'like a thistle covered with prickles'. Just to push the point home, they lopped his head off.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia for joining a union, an early example of practical Thatcherism. And York's own martyr, Margaret Clitherow, was stretched out and crushed under a door, dying in agony for her Catholicism.

Now, in Sunderland stallholder Steve Thoburn, we have a trainee martyr keen to join this pious band. Thoburn is being persecuted not for his religion or his right to lawful assembly, but for the cause of the imperial banana. And although the so-called Metric Martyr faces a small fine rather than death or transportation, he faces it with stoicism - and half a pound of yer best toms.

Thoburn refused to mark his scales in metric as well as imperial measures. After selling trading standards officers a pound of bananas for 34p, he was taken to court.

The legal bill is expected to waste £250,000 of our money. One more petty row that has no place in court but inevitably ends up there.

Thoburn certainly has his supporters, Jilly Cooper and Ian Botham among them. Heavyweights both: you don't get many of them to the pound.

The Daily Telegraph has also weighed in on the Metric Martyr's behalf. "An honest man faces ruin because he continued to treat with his customers in the units of their choice," the paper said yesterday, in a clumsily-worded leader.

The Telegraph is wrong, of course: in reality, he denied his customers choice. The European Union directive that so affronts Thoburn's tender sensibilities does not stop him selling fruit and veg in pounds and ounces. It simply insists that he also marks them up in kilograms and grams too.

That is good for the customer. The easier it is to compare prices within Britain - and between Britain and its metric competitors in Europe - the easier it is to differentiate between a good and a bad deal. If one trader refuses to put metric prices on his goods, customers have every right to ask what he is trying to hide.

Tellingly, objectors to this perfectly sensible arrangement, such as Telegraph readers, Mr Botham, Keith Waterhouse and the UK Independence Party, are all of a certain age. No thought is given to the children who are taught in kilos and grams. Do the Metric Martyr and his ilk not care to cater to the needs of the next generation of customer?

But then, this spat has nothing to do with consumers. It is just another chance for Euro-sceptics to spread bad feeling about the EU. The same could be said of the single currency argument: suddenly we are supposed to develop great emotional loyalty to the pound. But why? We didn't save the groat, the guinea or the farthing, and thrive without them.

Britons are all very mixed up about their weights and measures. I drink pints (or as near to pints as most pubs deign to serve), buy apples by the pound, drive miles, measure in centimetres, metres and millilitres but guesstimate in acres, feet and inches, bask in Fahrenheit when it's hot and shiver in Celsius when its cold, and cook at gas mark five. That's what growing up in post-empire, imperial Britain does to you.

I cannot help thinking if we all had to use the far more systematic metric system it would ultimately make the world a simpler and happier place. But I'm not going to be a martyr about it.