I don’t suppose anyone was surprised to see Cadbury’s Dairy Milk top the table of the nation’s favourite chocolate confectionery. A quiet, unglamorous workhorse among chocolate bars, Dairy Milk nevertheless sets standards of reliability and satisfaction by which all bars in this area must be judged and of which most can only dream.

No, the bolt from the blue was the performance of Curly Wurly, finishing ahead of Mars in second spot, with Galaxy trailing them both in fourth and with Flake way back in a disappointing seventh. This is the result that has sent a shockwave across Britain’s confectionery counters and blown the received order wide open.

No disrespect to the Curly Wurly, a determined presence on the shelves since the Seventies, but few were tipping it for major honours in 2007, let alone to poll bigger numbers than the mighty Mars and the dependable Snickers (fifth). Indeed, some experts wouldn’t even have backed it to see off the perfumed and faintly ridiculous Bounty (nowhere).

There has always been something of The Beano about the Curly Wurly. A bendy strip of what could pass for chocolate-coated chicken wire, only much chewier than that, it has been known to supply valuable assistance in the extraction of milk teeth and perfectly stable fillings. In the significant effort of separating the bar into edible portions, the coating tends to fall off the caramel, spraying chocolate shrapnel within a radius of anything up to 19ft. Accordingly, when did you last see a grown-up eating one in a public place?

Yet the Curly Wurly does stand boldly outside the two main trends in modern confectionery development. First, it has no truck with the tendency towards gratuitous supersizing, which rightly worries dieticians and games teachers alike. The king-size Mars is, let’s face it, like the Kit-Kat Chunky, not so much a snack as a chocolate cosh, and, given present rates of expansion, the finger of fudge will not outlast the decade, unless it remodels itself as a fist of fudge.

Secondly, Curly Wurly continues to offer caramel in stiffened, toffee form, rather than as the golden, near-liquid substance that seems to be the industry standard these days. Galaxy Caramel, Caramel Aero, Caramel Kit-Kat . . . few are the major bars that don’t now come in a version with caramel goo injected like cavity insulation into their outer wall, suggesting that the nation has, not only an ever sweeter tooth, but also an ever softer one. (Look out for increased caramel presence in biscuits, too, and even as a trimming for your coffee.)

In this context, the Curly Wurly’s strong poll showing is heartening, and reflects reassuringly on us all. Yes, this may be an increasingly caramelised Britain, ever more drawn to sickly substances that can be masticated with gums alone. But show us something requiring teeth and effort, and we’ll still admire it and vote for it fondly. Even if we might not actually eat it.

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