Dr David Lewis, formerly of the University of Sussex, and now of the Mind Lab, and most definitely of the “I’m never getting laid again” brigade, has done some research, probably to prove to women that men really are wholly unnecessary and there’s no need to get your legs waxed when you can buy a better snog from a machine.

Unsurprisingly, this essential study was funded by members of the food industry, although nobody’s owned up to forking out, although a MASSIVE clue comes from the chocolate they used was a new dark chocolate from Cadbury’s, so expect that to turn up in an ad campaign soon. It’s a crying shame that dark chocolate is hideous and vile because it is apparently quite good for you: my heart rate would probably go up in leaps and bounds too once I’d realised what I’d just eaten, shortly before washing my mouth out with bleach.

"There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz,” said Dr Lewis, who got a load of 20-somethings to melt chocolate in their mouths and then kiss which seems a bit messy, although also the best thing in the world EVER.

Of course chocolate is better than kissing, it’s utterly selfish. It’s delectably, thrillingly egotistical. You can break a piece off and give it to someone as a cursory wave towards the concept of sharing, but only you decide how much to eat of it and when. It’s up to you whether you mechanically munch your way through, or whether you press it against the roof of your mouth and suck off the layers one by one until your jaws are coated in luscious fragments of goo. You get the breaking waves of goodness smoking their way into your serotonin receptors. Cor…

Still, unless you’re in 9 and a half Weeks, you don’t generally share chocolate with people in the way you do kissing. Passing a box of Roses around the room doesn’t quite have the same frisson as curling your tongue around the inside of someone’s upper lip (unless it’s a seriously good praline in which case kissing be damned).

Although the study found that kissing raised the heartbeat, the chocolate increased heart rates more from a resting rate of about 60 beats per minute to 140. When you bear in mind that the volunteers were standing in a lab wearing electrodes attached to their skulls, and heart monitors, they’re probably going to be scared out of their wits. I’ve had electrodes on my head before and it makes you feel like Frankenstein about to sit an exam. I reckon the volunteers stressed out a bit about not getting the right result that the excitement of finally being on the test made their heart rates soar, and then getting the kissing afterwards calmed them down a bit. Either that or they were too busy concentrating on getting the chocolate off each other’s teeth to notice that their heart rates had stopped doing the tango. Funny that they don’t mention the exact results of the kissing except to say chocolate did better…

I’ve tried giving up chocolate for Lent a few times, and other than the fact I waved goodbye to the Church when I was 9 and therefore have little interest in keeping my distinctly grubby Lenten vows, it didn’t work because I love eating chocolate and have an acrimonious relationship with self-restraint.

The Cadbury’s sponsored-advert of my life will go as follows. I will be played by Julia Stiles( who will be flawlessly attired in a Petite Salope dress and Chanel accessories._

It’s Sunday. Kat (played by Julia Stiles) lies curled up on the sofa with the papers. The delicate tendrils of a Cadbury’s Picnic unfurl in her mouth. She probably makes a Bisto face.

CUT TO

Summer. SFX: The hollow ‘click’ of a barky strip of Magnum breaking off and girl then curling her upper lip around it to stop it falling down her front and making her look like messy toddler.

CUT TO

Most days in Autumn. K (pbJS) making a really gorgeous chocolate sauce and pouring it onto ice cream, then mushing it all up. Or not. Depending.

CUT TO

Cake.

CUT TO

Maltesers Easter Eggs: that lovely cloying malty chocolate in a whole egg. If you haven’t ever had one, you haven’t truly eaten chocolate. Fuck what Europe says, I like “family” milk chocolate. Cocoa content be damned.

CUT TO

Cake, also, éclairs.

CUT TO

Mavericks. Chocolate you can’t get anymore. Guerilla chocolate.

CUT TO

The massive chocolate montage. There will be a tap dance, chorus girls in a can-can line, a large pond and unleashing of doves and it will climax with everyone stringing up Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder and setting the original Roald Dahl free.

ENDS.

(No, not quite ends. There needs to be a kiss at the end, and one that makes K (pbJS) heart go significantly above 140bpm.)

That’s better.

ENDS.