[Casey76]

I'm being very conscientious this year, and I've been removing all side shoots (OK, I have a couple of "double cordons" where the side shoot starts right at from the first pair of leaves, and I didn't have the heart to remove 10ins of plant (GC bought)

In the past I've really let tomatoes just get on with it, staking as necessary, but not being too bothered about side shoots or not.  I've always had plenty of fruits (when not blight struck), so i was wondering why the necessity to remove the shoots

(sorry for all of the tomato questions recently!)

[mumofstig]

if you leave them on the plants spends a lot of energy on making leaf growth rather than concentrating on fruit - that's the theory anyway

[Trillium]

You do get a lot of leaf growth as well as lots of extra fruiting stems which can quickly turn into a jungle. I'll leave maybe 2 extra side shoots and tie them to separate stakes and take off the rest of the sucker shoots. I also have to start taking off lower leaves once flowers appear, but I take the leaves off only below the first flowers until another set of higher flowers appear and then I'll remove some of the next set of leaves. I find this works well since little energy goes into making lots of bushy leaves and more energy goes into the extra toms. By the time the first set of leaves has fruits filling out, the next set of flowers is out, so no worries.