Those EU bureaucrats should have a break...

CALL me a sentimental old fool, but I’ve a soft spot for those nostalgia programmes that have cropped up on television over the past decade or so.

You know the shows I mean. They usually involve some vaguely familiar-looking talking heads banging on at length about gobstoppers, spacehoppers, ABBA, leg warmers, the Commodore 64 and various other throwbacks to the past. Though it shouldn’t, it often makes for compulsive viewing.

Granted, the subject matter might seem to be trivial and inconsequential. Is it really that important, for instance, whether or not David Essex was better than David Cassidy? (The answer on both counts, incidentally, is yes.)

Aside from music and television, these shows invariably feature plenty of talk about food and drink of yesteryear. It is reassuring to think that we have moved on quite some way from the glory days of Harp lager, Liebfraumilch and Babycham. The same goes for the prawn cocktail, chicken Kiev and Black Forest gateau.

By contrast, however, it is a good thing that the situation hasn’t changed greatly when it comes to confectionery. True, there were many less-than-essential chocolate bars on the market in my younger days. Off the top of my head, I can think of the Two and Two, Time Out and Banjo.

But there were also many fine examples of the chocolatiers’ art. To this very day, the Whole Nut remains a classic of the genre. I’m also partial to a Picnic or, as those of us old enough to remember it first time around know it, the Lunch bar. Of course, the crucial test here is how good any particular bar of chocolate tastes when accompanied by a cup of tea. My own old-school favourite in these circumstances is Fry’s Chocolate Cream, although the Terry’s Chocolate Orange comes a close second.

It goes without saying that the KitKat would have to be on the shortlist as well. It has been in production for well over 80 years now and, unless I am very much mistaken, everyone likes it with a cuppa. I think it works particularly well after a spot of light refrigeration.

Given the KitKat’s long and noble history, it is dismaying to see the legal battle its producers are now involved in. Reports last week revealed that it is to lose its protected trademark status in the European Union.

This development comes after the European Court of Justice ruled that the bar’s four-fingered design isn’t sufficiently well known in a number of member states, including Ireland. According to an account in one newspaper, the ruling means that ‘the KitKat shape will now be open to imitation by competitors’.

It goes without saying that this raises a number of issues. Even without the wrapper on, I’d have thought most of us would recognise a KitKat quicker than we would bacon and cabbage, coddle, Irish stew, black pudding or anything else that qualifies as part of our indigenous cuisine.

That is almost besides the point in some respects, though. Given that my eyes automatically glaze over at the mention of Luxembourg or Brussels or Strasbourg, I’m just surprised to discover that this is the sort of thing the Court of Justice rules on. I’d have assumed they would have more important stuff to be doing.

Apparently not. Still, I don’t doubt for a moment that its members are distinguished and learned individuals who take their duties very seriously indeed. But there is something comical about the notion of Europe’s finest judicial minds agonising over the status of a bar of chocolate.

The case is part of a wider legal battle between KitKat manufacturer Nestlé and US-owned rival Mondelez International, which owns Cadbury and various other chocolate brands. In a separate action, bosses at Nestlé are challenging the British trademark for the shade of purple used on Dairy Milk wrapper. It hardly needs saying that the principal winners in all of this will be the lawyers.

Following last week’s ruling, a Nestlé spokesman insisted that the company ‘did submit sufficient evidence to prove acquired distinctiveness’ of the four-finger design. But, of course, m’luds had already given them the two fingers at that stage.