Our fondness for Cadbury’s is more than a love of chocolate

(and, yes, Manchester, we still are!).

Ever since John Cadbury began selling teas and coffees in Bull Street almost 200 years ago, the company that still bears his name has been a byword for trade and industry.

Today, the company has grown exponentially and now employs around 45,000 people worldwide and 5,700 in the UK and Ireland, including the Bournville site.

But they have also pioneered a new type of corporate pastoral care, from the establishment of the model Bournville estate to improve workers’ conditions to the wideranging support they give to local charitable foundations.

What successive generations of Cadburys have shown is that business is more than just a means to make money – it can also be used to nurture those employed and the wider community.

These two strains – commerce and charity – are what makes Birmingham, once known as the Workshop of the World, so special. Certainly, much of what I’ve learnt about business came from my time here. In 1993, at the tender age of 23 (all right, I was never that tender), I was appointed managing director of Birmingham City FC and managed, by hook and by crook, to take the club from the brink of bankruptcy to being a viable business. I had to be very single-minded because we had to get control of the business: we were technically in administration and had run out of money.

I worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and maximised every business opportunity I could. At the end of my first year we made a profit for the first time in the club’s modern history and by 1997 I was able to float the business and became the youngest managing director of a PLC in the UK.

I couldn’t have done that without the incredible support of the club’s fan base, or without the help of the city’s business community.

Football clubs, like any other business, have a broader responsibility than their own shareholders.

They can be used as a tool to bring about social change, to help those less fortunate in society, and to support local communities. Birmingham City is still at the heart of a number of successful community projects, and it is hard to overestimate the influence the Cadbury family had on promoting a socially responsible way to do business.

The city has always been a hotbed of iconoclastic thinking, a place where new ideas take shape, and where risk-takers have been allowed to thrive.

Philanthropy has been, and continues to be, a key component of Birmingham’s commercial activity, and all around us we see the investments that are made by successful individuals and firms that are intended to improve living conditions and produce better outcomes for the city’s inhabitants.

The city has always been a hotbed of iconoclastic thinking, a place where new ideas take shape

The holy trinity of working hard, living well and contributing to society is still very much the guiding principle in Birmingham.

The city’s migrant community, of course, has played a major role in establishing and running new firms, and they have been attracted to Birmingham by the open nature of the people here, and the vibrancy of our local business world.

Birmingham’s future rests on attracting and retaining talented workers, both home-grown and those who have come from other parts of the world.

LBC raised the question and Birmingham has spoken. The Cadbury family, a long time before we’d ever heard of Corporate Social Responsibility, have weaved a golden thread through Birmingham’s vivid tapestry.

I am not surprised that Brummies consider Cadbury as much more than a chocolate bar, and it’s heartening to know that in 2016 they are still mightily proud of them.

Baroness Brady is the former managing director of Birmingham City FC, a broadcaster and

businesswoman