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I’ve thought of the ultimate sweet gesture.

There are few alive in Britain today who will not have had culturally ingrained upon them the significance of the ‘last Rolo‘. For some reason, this ad campaign a couple of years ago seems to have fundamentally altered the psyche towards these sweets such that, if ever anyone is eating a packet in your vicinity, a short debate on the destination of the final rolo will ensue.

So, the sweetest possible thing? Why not, from your last Rolos, make a small collection in an old wrapper, thus creating an entire packet of last Rolos and then, offer your beloved the last of these? Your last last Rolo! I propose to call this illustrious chocolate the last² Rolo, in accordance with my education as a physicist.

This concept is obviously extensible to last³ Rolo, or even lastⁿ Rolo, but I think the sheer number of Rolos needed to be consumed to achieve powers above two would result either in extreme fatness or the Rolos going mouldy before being consumed.

Thus, lastⁿ Rolo has no non-obese solutions for integer powers above two. And I shall call this ‘Chocolat’s Last Theorem’, in a very bad pun that anyone who does understand should be ashamed to.

On a slightly different note…I tried Googling “rolo”, to little avail, so refined it to “rolo chocolate”. I then found both Nestlé and Hershey’s. Following the links, I discovered that the American Rolo is identical to the International edition, in a surprising deviation from the norm (I imagine the American Rolo is an inch across where ours is a centimetre or similar - this would fit in with both Imperial measurement and obesity stereotypes)…which came first? Any ideas, anyone?

Sunday, December 12th, 2004 11:20 | permalink | trackback