Seven steps to brieing perfect

Lesson number one: each customer is entitled to try before they buy (Mr E is entitled, he is sure, to try as he sells – his favourite being St Tola goat’s cheese).

Lesson number two: useful comments are appreciated; background knowledge on the cheeses assists sales. Customers love miscellaneous cheese information. For example: the grey line that runs though Morbier is formed when a layer of ash is spread over the morning batch of curd to keep it moist until the evening’s milking when the second batch of curd is spread over the top and the cheese is left to age.

Lesson number three: when using the till don’t pull the receipt out to enthusiastically or the card terminal is liable to flying across the room and drawing unnecessary attention to oneself.

Lesson number four: learn how to wrap a cheese neatly in wax paper. It is embarrassing doing a messy job for a customer; primary school wrapping is not good enough. Observe that a different technique is required for rounds and for squares.

Lesson number five: a cheese wire is a silent and effective blade. In fact, if Mr E was a character on a cluedo board a cheese wire would now be his weapon of choice, overtaking his previous selection: the mace.

Lesson number six: scrape off new growths of overnight mould from the surface of the cheeses before opening the shop doors to customers. It is sometimes best to remove an over cautious layer from underneath the mould, and consume. Customers, unlike staff, perhaps don’t appreciate that mouldy cheese is still good cheese.

Lesson number seven: prove yourself worthy of deliveries. Starting with local luxury hotels you may be promoted to private (and exclusive) customer’s houses such as Buckingham Palace. However, the Royal family like the types of cheeses that a real turophile would only feed to French babies.