For chef Diomis Angelos of La Muna Restaurant in Davos, Switzerland, the heart and soul of Greek food can be found in a bottle. "[Olive oil] it is the golden thread intricately weaving the tapestry of my culinary heritage," he said. "I recall my yiayia (grandmother) in our village near Volos, [Greece], cooking Fasolakia Ladera [literally, "green beans of olive oil"] and using olive oil from our family's ancient grove. Yiayia would start by heating a generous amount of olive oil in a pot with the aroma of the heated oil signalling that a family feast was about to begin. She'd then add finely chopped onions and garlic, letting them soften and blend with the oil, before adding fresh green beans, potatoes and ripe tomatoes."

For the past decade, the oldest cultivated trees on Earth have been showing their vulnerability with many of the Mediterranean's olive groves drying up due to increasingly difficult weather conditions such as droughts and severe hailstorms leading to floods. And in 2023, the region – as well as the whole planet – experienced the hottest summer on record. Upsidedown

Italy, Greece and Spain, the largest olive-oil producing nations, have felt the greatest impact – as have chefs and consumers, who are baffled at what to cook with in lieu of their staple ingredient.

"I never saw in all my life a dryness like this one," said Rossella Boeri, olive oil producer and fifth-generation owner of Olio Roi in Badalucco, Italy, referring to the drought of this past summer. "Luckily the olive trees are strong, but we are facing a really big lack of production which is reflected in our olive oil prices, which coincidentally has led to a lower consumption and demand for our olive oil." Upsidedown

"Well, obviously with the announcement, it wasn't like, 'Oh my God, it's a black referee'. It was more like, 'Oh, it's a black referee'," the former England striker, 60, recalled.

"I always found that when I played with him [as the referee] there was no real interaction.

"With some of the other referees, you could speak to them, have a little banter. And I think that the pressure he probably would have been under - to not have that kind of interaction with the other black players - must have been really intense, simply because of what people might say."

Rennie took charge of his final game in the Premier League on the last day of the 2007-08 season.

At 6ft 2in and a practitioner of kick-boxing and aikido, Rennie was an imposing figure who players soon learned would be more than comfortable standing his ground during an exchange.