You might have guessed that I like a bit of chocolate every now and then...

...which is a tiny bit like stating that Kate Moss likes her men a bit on the naughty side or that Paris Hilton just might be running the risk of ending up more bow-legged than an 1880s cowboy.

On a lazy morning a couple of days ago, I was chugging up the hill in my pro-magnon magna and was kind of listening in to SAFM's 'hilarious' morning show. The usual stuff - 'kooky' crew + hard-working un-credited straight man who has to push all of the buttons, remind us of the news, weather, traffic-jams, program in the crap music and shove in the taped advertisements that sound about as professional as Mr Cunno's out-takes.

Seeing as we're about one week away from the non-ratings season, and said 'hilariously kooky morning crew' will then get until February off as a 'well-earned break' but their straight man will still have to get up at 4.00am to look after the fill-in fools, they were clearly struggling for comedic talk-back matter. Hence, the most obvious subject of all - how many listeners out there like chocolate?

All of the callers were female which wasn't a huge surprise to anybody. All of them professed a love for Tim Tams, fruchocs and Cadbury's - especially at a certain time of the month, or if home alone with a decent chick-flick DVD. Amateurs, I snorted to myself. Fools! A true chocolate addict doesn't need to jam up a switchboard in the hopes of scoring a Robbie Williams CD.

No, a true addict hides their addiction. A true chocoholic realises they're addicted; that it is unhealthy, expensive and unflattering for the figure, yet they don't care. They (we, I) embrace this. Why the hell do I run 6 kilometres three mornings a week, ride my bike to work twice and week and do karate? To get fit and be strong? Well, yeah, but mostly so that I can EAT MORE CHOCOLATE. ALL THE TIME.
My love of chocolate has driven me to extreme and dedicated levels of exercise and fitness. With the amount of physical activity my body is subjected to, I should resemble a marathon runner who's lost weight after a gastro attack. A thin strip of beef jerky with ropey veins winding their way up my arms, veins that are thicker than the arm bones themselves....

Instead, a recent in-house university fat'n'fitness test (thankfully I fell into the 'normal, control group' category and not the OMIGOD - she's bloody HUGE group) showed that I was way waaay fitter than the average woman my age or younger, but had a body fat content of 26%. Yes, you obsessed, calorie counters, it should be between 20-25%. Fit but Fat, that's me. So why the hell should I give up being a chocoholic? I should have a body fat content of 43% which is average cocoa butter standard for decent chocolate, so I'm way ahead baby, way ahead.

In my stress-a-holic days at my previous employer, I'd kick off my 7.30am start with a King-sized Caramel Kit Kat, followed by a Wagon Wheel (full size, not those kiddy pack ones) and wash it down with 600ml of the finest drink in the world, Farmers' Union Iced Coffee. These days, I might not do that every single morning, but boy-oh-boy, is the Choccie Monster screaming out my name by 10.00am...!

Having the university cafe directly underneath our office is either a good or a bad thing, depending on your situation. Before John Howard decided to remove compulsory student unionism, the shop was subsidised, meaning - oh glory of glories - chocolate bars were cheaper there than even the supermarket. Now, they're supermarket prices, so I don't have to dash up to Foodland and snatch up 10 crunchies and 5 dove family blocks when they're on sale.

Winter makes things worse. One day (this is true, my darling Love Chunks, I'm ashamed to say), I was up at Foodland getting sensible stuff for work (dishwashing liquid, notepads, teabags) and spied those 135g 'gift boxes' of Lindt balls for only $5.99. They are normally $9.99, and rarely have the dark blue boxes containing the dark ones. BARGAIN, I thought, snatching up three boxes - I'll take them home to share with Love Chunks in front of the telly and....

.... they didn't even make it out of my office. I'd absent-mindedly open one box, swear I was only going to suck one and keep on proof reading, typing or working away at the keyboard. Less than thirty minutes later, my jiggling leg, sticky face and bloated stomach would reveal that I had in fact inhaled all twelve. Three days in a row.

On those very same evenings, after Sapphire was in bed, Dogadoo asleep in her bean bag and a DVD on the telly, Love Chunks would ask, "Fancy a choccy square or two?" and immediately duck into the kitchen. He didn't even have to wait for my answer, and would return with a large tupperware container in which he'd thoughtfully already broken up four family blocks of chocolate into convenient, mouth-sized squares of two. That's the kind of man he is, dear readers - caring, sensitive, considerate and possessing the rare skill of being able to do all this without scoffing half of it halfway during the task.

Knowing that I'd already inhaled twelve Lindt balls, my chocoholism would still permit me to reply in a 'Oh, how lovely, how kind, how nice' kind of voice, "Oh, that'd be great", as though I'd spent the day eating only carrot sticks and mung beans. Twenty five handfuls of LC's squares later and my day was complete.

Multiply that by at least 200 and you have my average year. Bring on 2007!