CUPID has been working his magic in Pershore this year making sure love has been blossoming for the start of the annual plum festival.

The event’s official mascot Prunella Plum introduced her sweetheart Eggbert, the Pershore yellow egg plum, to everyone attending the Plum Blossom Sunday on July 3 – the first event of the two-month long series of activities to mark Pershore’s association with the delicious fruit.

Prunella and her beau Eggbert will be inseparable during the various festival occasions – making it an even more colourful event this year.

Tourism officer for Wychavon Angela Tidmarsh said: “It’s great to have a bit of fun with our mascots and lovely to add to the plum family. The Pershore yellow egg plum is historically significant to Pershore being discovered growing in Tiddesley Woods in the early 19th century.

“It’s a great to celebrate this unique fruit and raise its profile in this fun and quirky way.”

Eggbert joins Prunella, and other members of the Pershore plum family including the Plum Princess and her attendants, Queen Victoria and the plum charmer dressed in robes of papal purple who serenades the plum trees with his clarinet to encourage their production of the fruit.

Angela added that she had wanted to add another mascot to the Pershore Plum Festival line-up for some time but they could not afford the costume. However a new sponsor Evesham communications firm Insightconxs made it possible.

“I have always wanted another mascot because a well-known Pershore resident Ernie Fuller, who I lived next door to as a small child and was always Uncle Ernie to me, used to tell me the plum for Pershore was the yellow egg plum.

“I said I would sort it one day. I came up with the name years ago but Ernie has now passed away so he never got to see Eggbert.”

Ernie Fuller was extremely knowledgeable about Pershore and wrote two books – the first was Pershore People and Poems and the second penned at the age of 90 was Pershore God Help Us – about his life and those of characters in the town.

Angela explained the festival was focusing a lot on the heritage of plums in Pershore and how they helped to win the Great War,

“There were so many egg plums grown in this area, they were transported all around the country to the Land Army and Women’s Institutes who made them into jam for the soldiers,” said Angela.

Cultural historian and University of Worcester lecturer Professor Maggie Andrews and Jenni Waugh, community history consultant, have written a book called How the Pershore Plum Won the Great War. This will be launched in Plum Alley, Pershore on Saturday August 20.