Cadbury World is a big fat rip-off

When did it become a tradition to organise expensive birthday treats for your children? I don’t want to sound like a character in Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but when I was a boy the most I could hope for on my birthday was a quick game of football with my dad in Highgate Woods. It would have been completely unthinkable for my parents to actually organise a party for me, complete with an entertainer.

Nowadays, any celebration that costs less than £200 is considered child cruelty. And before anyone tells me to ‘check my privilege’, I don’t think this phenomenon is confined to the well off. On the contrary, my guess is that the further you travel down the social scale, the more lavish the children’s birthday parties are. It’s probably only at the very top of the pyramid — in some ageing Duke’s stately home — that kids are still fobbed off with a ticket to the Odeon and a bag of Maltesers.

Which is how I found myself driving to Cadbury World on Fred’s sixth birthday last Saturday. Mercifully, he was only allowed to bring one friend, but the expense was still off the charts. My children thought the £10.95 entrance fee was the bargain of the century because as they understood it, they’d be able to eat as much chocolate as they liked. Consequently, my offer to give them each £10.95, thereby avoiding the expense and inconvenience of driving to the West Midlands, fell on deaf ears.

The first thing you notice on arriving at Cadbury World is how fat the other punters are. Hardly surprising, given that the entire place is a shrine to cheap chocolate, but you’d think the visitors would look at each other and the penny would drop.