Snap, crackle and porn ...

Swivel-eyed health experts loom from behind daytime TV sofas to warn us of the sweet treat dangers at least once a fortnight. Risks include obesity, diabetes and poking your eye out with a Toblerone, to name but three from the NHS website.

And yet, as is the case of the Magnum chocolate ice cream, the advertisers will have us believe choccy can heighten passion and lubricate the wheels of romance. Chocolate is sexy. Watch the TV ads.

You can sensually unwrap the Magnum and bite down on the strong dark exterior to reveal the seductive mystery inside. A soft creamy centre which, naturally, you lick to the sound of crashing waves.

I’m more a Strawberry Mivvy man myself, and you can read into that what you will.

That disturbing sexualisation is applied to every aspect of the Magnum ... except the stick. Maybe they tried. Some model, running her (or his) cream splattered fingernails along the wooden stick. I don’t know. In the end, they simply ignored it. I guess it’s pretty hard to sexualise a thin offcut of birch. At a push I can link chocolate to romance, but when I see a lolly stick, I only think spelks.

Coco Pops are chocolate treats but they are spared the soft-porn treatment. Just as well. My children eat Coco Pops. I don’t want some half-naked floozy caressing a spoon to sell breakfast cereal. I want cartoon monkeys.

Problem is, my boys aren’t eating the cereal at the moment. “The Coco Pops have gone off,” I was told. And by ‘gone off’ they mean they’ve left the packet open and the pops have melded together into one giant block of pops.

Despite me mushing them up to separate the pops, both boys (aged 15 and 18) won’t touch them. Three boxes have ended up like this. To that end, I found myself this week, Sellotaping one end of the cereal packet together again, refilling with the excess Coco Pops from abandoned boxes, and putting the packet back in the box upside down. It now looks like an unopened packet. I then resealed the Coco Pops box lid with glue. When they next came for breakfast, I told them I’d got rid of the duff stuff and bought a new packet. And they fell for it.

When sex doesn’t sell, try tightfisted fathers ...