It definitely hasn't always been everywhere. My grandfather - British - served during the 2nd World War in a Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers workshop in India, fixing broken down vehicles for the war effort. The way my dad describes it, he had a very good war because he seemingly spent the whole time dicking around with tools and stealing bananas from the back of lorries on a motor bike.

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He knew what bananas were but, in the UK at least, they were rare items that perhaps you'd get as a treat at Christmas, in much the same way if you were lucky you might get a satsuma or clementine around Christmas. But there, in India, where bananas were grown locally and incredibly plentiful, they'd transport them around in the back on these slow, ponderous, open topped lorries. He would have to take various vehicles out for drives to test them after fixing them up, so whenever he had something fast he took it upon himself to grab a stick, go for a ride and try and hook a bunch of bananas like he's trying to win a stuffed toy at a fairground.

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I imagine the locals thought he was a bit nuts, risking life and limb for these boring fruit that were ten a penny but for him they were these absurdly exotic treats and here he was, able to hook more in one grab than he'd ever seen in one place in his whole life. And that was only 75 years ago!