This week saw the passing of a man who brought enormous, if passing, pleasure to Britain: Brian Sollitt, creator of After Eight mints, Yorkies, Matchmakers and Lion bars in the course of a long career as chocolatier at Rowntree's in York.
Sollitt's story is, fittingly, a sweet one. He was recruited at the age of 15 to hand pipe Black Magic chocolates. In the 1960s he was "tasked with coming up with a new luxurious chocolate that was to be wrapped around a peppermint fondant". This was the After Eight, still going, with Sollitt's method of preventing mint ooze still a secret. And just last December, the cheery, comfortably-sized Yorkshireman presented a giant After Eight to parliament to mark the great mint's 50th anniversary. He has, inevitably, been labelled "a real-life Willie Wonka".
But, as the juices run and thoughts turn to a quick trip out for a few favourite purchases, you do find yourself wondering about the British and chocolate; especially as it is supposed to be all about sex.
This, for example, is the Chocolate Dictionary:
"What is it about chocolates that they should lend themselves so readily to seductive interpretations? Some say it's because chocolate melts at body temperature, and feels so pleasurable on the palate. Others say it's because chocolate appeals to all five senses. In truth, it's a combination of both of these, plus the added symbolism. Significantly, when pronouncing 'chocolate' the lips are pouted as if to kiss, and when eating chocolate the lips seem to curve round it like two lovers embracing."
Yes, indeed: hence the giant selection pack which includes Joanne Harris's Chocolat, those terribly subtle old Flake adverts involving a solemn but determined girl in a field, those persistent but unfounded rumours about Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger, George Lazenby as "Big Fry", and, of course, the Milk Tray man, originator of the beguiling idea that all you had to do was abseil down a cliff, kill a shark, haul yourself up the side of a luxury yacht, leave your box, escape undetected, and the hazelnut whirls or whatever would make nookie a sure thing.
But there's something else, too: none other than that acclaimed British sex substitute, class. Sollitt's After Eights were aimed at the aspirational middle classes in the 1960s just as the real secret of the Black Magic box, introduced in the 1930s by one of Rowntree's predecessors, was that they were stylishly presented but cheap chocolates pretending to be the ones that the toffs were paying a good butler's wage for. (By contrast, Cadbury's Dairy Box, launched in 1936, was aimed squarely at working-class women.)
And so it went on. The real (or imaginary) truck-driving men who always kept a Yorkie (another of Sollitt's) on the dashboard were not supposed to be the sort who would be impressed by the ability of Treets to melt in your mouth and not in your hand. Should you give Roses or Quality Street?
All very difficult, and packed with the usual ridiculousness of both class and sex. The rest of Europe, for instance, has long sneered at our lower-class milk chocolate – the vegetable fat! the pathetic amount of cocoa! They wanted us to call it vegolate, not chocolate, until, as we journalists like to say, sanity prevailed.
The fiercest critic was Italy, home of Ferrero Rocher, makers of the most deliciously misfiring class ad yet, the ambassador's reception where the things are piled high on salvers, and the sophisticated lady memorably opines, "Monsieur, with these Rocher you're really spoiling us!" Bliss.
And much more deliciousness in all senses has arrived with the artisan chocolatier: 100% cocoa chocolate, Chunky Ladies Secrets, Strawberry White Puddles, Dark Bolivian Brazil Nut Nibbles, Nostalgia Peanut Nougat Bar, Caramel Smudge, and other such delights.
Those who savour both chocolate and the complications of human endeavour and existence will be further struck by the pioneering role played in this most earthly of indulgences by the Quaker families of Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree. And now it's time to have a break (with or without a popular chocolate finger biscuit bar).