Nuts and Bolts: chocolate delight.

Have you ever eaten a Marathon chocolate bar?

Don't be too hasty in your denial, because in England until 1990 a Snickers Bar was called a Marathon Bar. And, personally, I've never eaten one since.

I mean, Marathon is obviously the sort of bar that gives you the strength to go a long way, isn't it. But Snickers? The company (Mars) haven't bothered even to pretend that's going to do you any good/ And what can be more important for a chocolate bar than giving an impression of delicious goodness?

I mean, let's look at the figures. The third top-selling chocolate brand in the world is Cadbury's; number two comes in as Toblerone; and the best-selling chocolate bar in the world is...

...wait for it...

...the Snickers Bar!

Oh.

Rats.

Another fine theory bites the dust.

The reason I've been thinking about the names of chocolate bars is that the other day I came across Mr Prempy. It's a new company set up in London by Shadi Geris and Suminder Sandhu to sell organic cakes and chocolate bars.

Their best-selling product is called...

....Gerald.

Yes, that's right, Gerald.

It's named after the trends forecaster Gerald Celente, a hero of one of the founders. There's also a Mr Prempy's product named after another hero, the philosopher Ludwig von Mises.

In the light of this information, the only theory I can come up with  is that the prospect of chocolate short-circuits the part of the brain that processes language.

And if anyone out there would like me to do some practical research to prove it, I'd be pleased to oblige.

Word To Use Today: one that's the name of a chocolate bar. Toblerone's name is a combination of the Italian word torrone, a type of nougat, and its creator Theodor Tobler; Cadbury was the inventor of the chocolate bar itself; and Snickers was the name of the Mars factory-owner's horse.