What a cut-throat world the growing of prize gooseberries is. Who would have thought?

I am, of course, referring to the sad and disturbing tale of Terry Price, 76, and the criminal sabotage of his prize gooseberry crop.

Anyone who has spent any time in and around mid-Cheshire will know just how serious the gooseberry growers take their hobby.

For Terry, it has been his passion for almost 60 years, after being given four trees when he was a teenager.

The gooseberry show season started with the Goostrey show on Saturday and after the devastating attack, poor Terry was only able to enter a couple of berries.

As Terry said: “I won Goostrey 11 times, came second 15 times and third 12 times. I haven’t been out of the first four for 10 years.

“I could have cried, honestly, I was that upset,” said Terry. “My trees were all droopy, 46 out of 50 were killed. It was definitely done deliberately.”

Now if you aren’t a part of the champion gooseberry growing world, you might be tempted to think this is something and nothing but it’s not.

As Terry pointed out, he took samples from his gooseberry pots and had had them analysed. The results of the tests showed that they had been attacked with a particularly nasty weedkiller that’s not available to the general public.

“The public can’t buy it, it’s much stronger, you have to have a licence to buy it,” said Terry.

So the question I would ask here is who would be so reckless as to go into someone else’s garden with super-strong and potentially dangerous weedkiller just to take out the competition from a gooseberry contest?

It is certainly a strange and slightly disturbing world we are living in.

Talking of strange and disturbing behaviour, I take my metaphorical hat off to the members of the public who detained a drunk-driver recently. I honestly don’t know if I would have been brave enough to do it.

Police say two members of the public rang 999 to report the man for driving at speeds in excess of 100mph by junction 18 of the motorway on Wednesday last week.

When police arrived, the man and his now stationary vehicle were stopped just off the junction for Northwich, Middlewich and Holmes Chapel where a member of the public had ‘detained’ the driver.

I really struggle to come to terms with the mentality of someone who could think it is acceptable behaviour to drink so much alcohol that a breath test revealed he was more than five times over the legal drink-drive limit then get in a car and drive at those speeds on the M6.

What is wrong with some people?

I’m quite ‘liberal’ in my views on crime and punishment but this idiot deserves everything he gets.

On a different topic, I don’t normally respond to comments from readers but just occasionally I think some are worthy of attention. So step forward M Cooper.

In the first instance, thank you for taking the time and trouble to write in with your views, dare I say your ‘opinion’.

And that’s the key here, opinion.

This column is predicated on the fact that it is an opinion column.

It is my views and my views alone and it would be a very poor world indeed if everyone agreed with me.

The ‘balance’ you quite rightly call for is actually provided by you and all the other readers who write in to disagree with me, giving your opinions that the Guardian happily publishes. That’s balance right there.

Just to clarify a couple of points you raise. I am most certainly not Mike Amesbury. I am not even a member of any political party.

If anything, I am a centrist and I’m somewhat concerned about the lurch to the right that politics in this country has taken.

Secondly, of course I accept Brexit has happened, that is a simple matter of fact, although I would dispute the deal was ‘oven ready’ as evidenced by the chaos surrounding the Northern Ireland border problem.

However, I will await with interest for you to supply me with a list of the ‘positives’ you say Brexit has brought us. It should make for interesting reading. For the sake of balance, if you want I will supply you with a list of ‘negatives’ you admit Brexit has brought.

And finally, calling for someone to effectively be sacked because you don’t agree with their politics is not a good look, is it?