Name: Forest Green Rovers.

Age: 128 years old.

Appearance: A bit wan, but successful nonetheless.

Forest Green? Ha! That sounds like a dish you would find at a crappy vegetarian restaurant. You’re not too far off the mark there.

Really? I’d assumed that this was about football. It is about football, but a specific type of football. Vegan football.

Let me guess, vegan football is like normal football, but you have to spend the entirety of the match telling everyone about the YouTube video of an abattoir you just watched. Stupid carnivore. I’m talking about Forest Green Rovers, the vegan football team that has just been promoted to the Football League for the first time in its history.

How are they vegan, exactly? The club’s owner is Dale Vince, a eco-warrior millionaire who made his fortune by selling renewable electricity to the national grid. When he bought the club, he banned red meat from all its menus.

Avoiding red meat doesn’t make you vegan. Ah, but that was just the first step. The club became 100% vegan at the end of 2015. No animal products of any description are on sale anywhere in the club. You can’t even get cow’s milk in your tea any more.

Yuck. Well hold on. The club’s Q pie – a Quorn and leek pie made with soya milk bechamel – just won a podium spot at this year’s British Pie awards. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

I suppose not. Still, at least the club’s success proves that athleticism isn’t necessarily dimmed by a commitment to a vegan lifestyle. Yes, about that.

What? The players are all vegan, right? I mean, there was that photo from a year ago, which appeared to show the club’s players and staff shovelling meat pies into their faces outside the Stroud branch of Greggs …

Oh, really? I knew it! Hypocrites! To be fair, the club’s veganism isn’t enforced out of work. Plus, they have just been promoted and they are more successful than at any other time in their history, so they must be doing something right.

Well, this is either a towering vindication of the vegan lifestyle, or a towering vindication of the Greggs sausage and bean melt. Great, now I’m hungry.

Do say: “Zig zag to the onion bag.”

Don’t say: “Incidentally, the onion bag is also tomorrow’s dinner.”