It may have something to do with an overwhelming suspicion of Brussels. It may be a preference based on age. But whether it's pounds and ounces or just plain kilos, the British love a martyr.
When a Sunderland trader, Steve Thoburn, defied a European Union directive by selling his fruit and vegetables by the pound rather than the kilo, Eurosceptics portrayed his stance as some kind of David-and-Goliath battle on behalf of English culture. The UK Independence Party and a coterie of anti-Brussels celebrities - including England cricketer Ian Botham and author Jilly Cooper - joined forces in the battle.
This was not just an argument about the Brussels bureaucracy imposing its weights and measures on the British, they chanted. No, it was a chance to preserve the Britain that John Major once described while sipping a pint of warm beer. It was the Britain of village spinsters cycling to church. Once Mr Thoburn's stance came to light, Daily Telegraph readers pledged money for his legal battle. Had he not a right to continue weighing his bananas and apples by the pound? Mr Thoburn's elderly customers, understandably reluctant to learn a new system of measurement, believed he had.
However, the trader's action failed. On Monday Sunderland magistrates' court gave the "metric martyr" a conditional six-month discharge on two counts of breaching the 1985 Weights and Measures Act. This was the legislation introduced to harmonise Britain's measurements with the rest of Europe.
Initially Mr Thoburn's battling spirit deserted him. He wanted to be "left alone to get on with my life and sell my fruit", he said. "I never set out to be a figurehead. It's a very lonely place to be." But within hours he was threatening to stand as an antimetrication candidate in the next election in the nearby Hartlepool seat of the former Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Mandelson. With Mr Mandelson facing the prospect of standing against former miners' leader Arthur Scargill, the contest for Hartlepool looks like it could be an interesting diversion from a widely expected Labour victory in the election.
Were it not for the Eurosceptics, Mr Thoburn's case might never have received such attention. Writing in the London Evening Standard this week, columnist Joan Smith said that anyone whose sense of national identity was fragile enough to depend upon using pounds and ounces "deserves to go the same way as those other famous British institutions, the farthing and the groat".
But the anti-metrication and, by extension, the Eurosceptic group is not just populated by elderly, out-of-touch people living in the south of England. Mr Thoburn is only 36 years old and many people, young and old alike, are wary of Brussels and the power it wields. The overwhelming majority are not jingoistic: they don't hate everything European. Indeed, they are just as likely to holiday in Paris or Milan as they are to support Mr Thoburn and to vote against abolishing sterling.
The government can hardly have been encouraged by the poll published by the Economic and Social Research Council a day after Mr Thoburn's conviction. This offered a gloomy assessment of the euro issue. Offering "a snapshot of the state of opinion" before the election, a group of 3,000 electors chose their top six issues in order of importance. The foot-and-mouth didn't get a mention and Europe was the sixth most important issue. The National Health Service came top.
However, the worrying news for Labour was that while it beat the Conservatives on its handling of every issue from the economy to education, it lost to the Tories on the euro. Fortyone per cent believed the Tories, whose "in Europe but not run by Europe" mantra rings true for many voters, would be the best party to handle the euro question compared with only 22 per cent for Labour.
Pro-Europeans will dismiss the "metric martyr" as a Eurosceptic crank, a local hero unable to grasp the sophisticated arguments in favour of full European integration. But they may have underestimated his popularity.