Well, well, you live and learn. I knew the phrase 'nutty as a fruitcake', meaning crazed, but had no idea 'Old fruit' referred to it, or the other meaning put forward by W.F.Lantry. What I do remember is the use of 'fruit' to mean 'girl' (cf. 'crumpet' and 'totty') in some male circles (not mine) in 60s Oxford. Hence the at the time side-splitting headline, in reference to the Oxford Union (university debating society) not admitting female undergraduates, 'Union Fruitless Without Women', in Parson's Pleasure, an ancestor of the still flourishing satirical fortnightly Private Eye.
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