In one of Gray Matter’s earliest inflictions on the reading public – way back in 1998 – I wrote of the lately deceased actor James Villiers whose famously fruity tones were first heard in Ian Hay’s play The Crimson Coconut.

As his Daily Telegraph obituarist noted, this was a turkey of some dimension, an opinion in which I entirely concurred having myself once acted in it.

Nothing remains of the colossal wreck of the production’s first (and only) night, save the memory of my lifting the gleaming silver lid of a serving dish to reveal, lit fuse fizzing brightly, a large, cartoon-style anarchist’s bomb.

This was “ze crimson coconut!” as I (and Villiers) had proclaimed it.

Hay was no doubt exploiting both in the title and action of his play the curious comic potential with which the coconut appears to be invested.

Why a coconut is, per se, an item of amusement I cannot say. But it certainly is. When I mentioned to friends that I was reading a book about coconuts they thought that this was funny and that the book probably was too.

This would surely not have been their reaction had author Robin Laurance – an experienced journalist and photographer (Guardian, Times, New York Times, and more) long resident in Oxford – chosen to write about another type of nut, as he so nearly did.

“My first idea was to write a book about marzipan and the almonds from which it is made,” he tells me in the sunny garden of his Summertown home.

“With research well under way, I was planning a panel with comparisons with other types of nut. I looked into coconuts and this was a eureka moment. It was so interesting. Coconuts had such a history – and such a present – that I decided to give up on marzipan and do a whole book on them.”

Coconut: How the Shy Fruit Shaped the World (The History Press, £15.99) is the happy result of that decision – informative, entertaining, sparkily written and (yes!) quite often funny.

Though The Crimson Coconut doesn’t get a look in (“I wish I’d known about it”) quite a lot on the cultural front does, if the Billy Cotton Band’s recording of I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts comes into this category.

The 1950 disc – with vocal by band member Alan Breeze – was a big seller in its day, regularly plugged on Cotton’s radio and television shows.

The act’s longevity on the airwaves, incidentally, probably had something to do with the fact that Billy Cotton Junior (the son) was to become the BBC’s head of light entertainment.

Though I take no great joy in the memory of it, I recall that I once heard Bunch of Coconuts ‘live’, having been taken as a boy (eight or nine) to see Billy and the team at Peterborough’s Embassy Theatre.

Here a decade later I had the unforgettable experience of a live performance by Jerry Lee Lewis, “the greatest pianist ever”, as John Cooper Clarke wisely described him in the process of choosing his Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 last week. Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On was the Jerry Lee record he picked.

But back to Billy Cotton’s Coconuts – this is a comedy hit still played at Cambridge United’s ground every time there’s a home win. For an explanation of this weird tradition, you’ll need to buy Robin’s book, in researching which he travelled as far afield as the Philippines and Thailand, where masses of coconuts are grown.

Readers can hardly fail to share, with the author, a fascination for the coconut, not least for its versatility, so many parts of it being useful, and not just as food and drink. In this respect, it invites comparison with the pig, famously exploited in every way – including, it’s said, for its squeak.

From the husk’s coarse fibre (coir) are fashioned ropes and matting, including that laid on the stone floor at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, for the baptism of the future Edward VII.

When his mother, Queen Victoria, married Prince Albert, millions of her subjects displayed burning candles made from coconut oil, whose other uses include the making of soap and margarine. Details on the fortunes made from these are fascinating to read about.

So, too, are the various medical uses to which it is applied. One American nutritionist’s huge list includes such conditions as heart disease, kidney infection, osteoporosis and type-2 diabetes. It is also good for (giving me a rare opportunity of spelling the word) the relief of haemorrhoids.

Remaining ‘below decks’, the charcoal made by burning coconut shells is approved by the NHS for relieving flatulence.

The myriad uses to which the charcoal is put proved for Robin the really big surprise of his research.

Gas masks with coconut charcoal filters protected millions during the Second World War. The charcoal is today used in research into nuclear fusion and in A&E departments as a first response to overdoses.

No laughing matter, then.

* Robin is talking about Coconut at Blackwell’s, Broad Street, on Tuesday at 3pm. Admission is free.