Britain’s Favourite Chocolate (Bar): All the air sucked out

Barred

Britain’s Favourite Chocolate Bar Channel 5

It was a tough choice between this and the interactive Black Mirror. But it’s no time of year for a DIY dystopia. And it’s the time to make tough choices. The ever-decreasing circles of talking-head memory-lane shows are good enough catalysts for ingrowing anxiety.

Listen to the MMR podcast: Britain’s favourite chocolate bar … and Britain’s favourite sweets!

They’re like I Love The ’70s, but smaller. Which is fitting, because in I Love The ’70s, everything – Space Hoppers, Slimcea, Scooby -Doo, Space Dust – was recalled as bigger, although that was wrong, and it was just that Stuart Maconie was smaller in the ’70s.

Britain’s Favourite Sweets: A case of suck and blow

The BBC kept banging out this crud up to I Love The ’90s, but that was too close, dreaming about yesterday’s tea break, so they stopped. Now Channel 5 bang it out.

Britain’s Favourite Chocolate Bar jumped out of the Christmas TV schedules as the fascinating nadir of the week of TV. And that’s big, because the week between Christmas and New Year is the fascinating nadir of the year’s 52 weeks of TV. Britain’s Favourite Chocolate Bar would be the sum of the worst of everything squared, not chocolate but the foie gras of telly. Everything would seem smaller than it did before.

Listen! The MMR Christmas TV schedules podcast

The best name they could trail was Joe Swash. Louisa Lytton? Wait a minute, okay, I see. The Channel 5 blurb itself was so half-hearted, as if they’d spotted something more interesting was on Discovery Shed and just couldn’t be arsed: “Chocolate-loving celebs nibble their way through the Top 20.”

Anyway, here’s what happened. Dairy Milk won. After two hours, and some petrifying fillers, with an ageing Milky Bar Kid and a competitive eater scoffing a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, and multiple groans over the non-appearance of Topic and whatever else didn’t appear, the most boring bar in the world won.

A chasm stretched on Twitter between #BritainsFavouriteChocolateBar and #BritainsFavouriteChocolate, as people realised one was not the other. What’s more, although the TV guide said ‘bar’, the show credits didn’t. Just ‘chocolate’. Like they’d changed it at the last minute.

Dom Joly was on, recognised him. Sleepwalked through, with a few mild-pithy remarks. Not so hard when you’re up against Swash (“I had a Milky Way once”), and Su Pollard (“I could eat five of these, but I’d be sick”).

Mars Bar was 20th. Hal Cruttenden (comedian) was shocked. Thousands had voted, though. People had spoken. Topic kept coming up. There was fake shock at the Toblerone Air Max redesign. But that was reversed, so it was irrelevant.

Thorntons was number 14. Now that’s not a bar, or a chocolate. Twix was 13. That’s not a bar, more of a biscuit. Boost was 12. That’s more of a biscuit too. It was getting like Most Shocking Celebrity Moments when they hung out Kanye West’s Lift Yourself. That’s a record, not an SCM.

Then there was that stuff about the campaign to bring back Wispa in 2007. Was that ever real? Maltesers came eighth. Not a bar. Fantastic, said Comedian, about the old Maltesers ads. They wouldn’t do rubbish. Bounty was seventh. There’s gotta be a certain percentage of people that love coconut, said Swash.

Marathon/Snickers was sixth. Knickers. Joly said he’d buy it if it was called Gusset.

Ferrero Rocher got fifth. Twitter was upset. “Love a Ferrero Rocher but it’s not even a chocolate bar is it? Absolute liberty!” said Emma Dodds.

Dairy Milk Fruit & Nut was fourth. Galaxy third. Love the Galaxy ads, a bit sexy, silk curtains blowing in the wind – know what I mean, said Swash.

Then Aero was second, and someone explained how all the air was sucked out and put in again, then Dairy Milk won. That is Britain in a bar, said Joly. And you know, he’s right. Dairy Milk eaters patrol these waters, or at least the cliffs, brandishing a glass and a half of pasteurised, turning back the dinghies of dark, continental bars.

Without that bar we wouldn’t have any of the others … it’s the daddy, said Swash, also mentioning how we could show the world what other bars we could do. And that’s enough. If you ate any more you’d be sick.

Anyway, it was a good excuse to show the gorilla ad. Best ad in the entire world, said Pollard. And you know, she’s right. And there’s next year’s nadir.