M&A: Is Cadbury's a national treasure?

Try a Cadbury's chocolate bar made in England and compare it to the supposedly identical product made in e.g. Australia or Malaysia. And you'll find out why British expats buy chocolates - along with their pork sausages and black pudding - to their new homes, even in breach of import regulations.

And why foreigners love Cadbury's chocolates when they visit the UK. Whatever the official export figures, the amount that goes abroad in personal luggage adds to it significantly.

Cadbury's has even managed to turn chocolate bars into a cult: if you've never had a Wispa, you've led a sorry and empty life. Such was the status of the bar that it's been re-introduced years after it was withdrawn in a rationalisation of the range. Shops sell out - and even overprice it.

US company MARS tried to match Cadbury for quality: the only place it built a market was in filled bars such as Mars Bar and Marathon (which, for some dumb international branding reason it renamed "Snickers" which isn't even a word in English and older people still call it by its original name).

The Swiss make great chocolate - but it's totally different to Cadbury's. And the home-grown brand outsells Swiss and other European brand by factors.

York chocolate maker Rowntree, manufacturer of the famous Kit Kat chocolate covered biscuit, fell to Nestle several years ago: and many jobs were lost. So was the quality of many of its products. Nestle may make the best instant coffee in the world (Blend 37) but for sure it doesn't make the best chocolate.

KRAFT, which makes the second best mayonnaise (Helmanns is the undisputed champ, if you can find it - and then the best version of that is the one made in the UK despite it being, originally, a US product) , wants to buy Cadbury. Now Hershey, which satisfies the tastes of many Americans but barely counts as an also-ran in the UK and in other Cadbury markets, thinks that buying Cadbury would be a good idea, say reports.

Cadbury has been about a lot more than chocolate.

For a long time, it was called Cadbury Scheppes and if you weren't eating chocolate, you were probably listening to the fzzz as a bottle or can of their tonic water or other soft-drink was being opened.

Then there was a demerger. The drinks part went off to pastures new. The chocolate part became, once more, simply Cadbury's.

Cadbury keeps introducing new brands. But it's the old staples that carry the weight: Flake, Crunchy, Milk Tray, Dairy Milk, Picnic, Turkish Delight and Roses.

In non-chocs, Bassets (Liquorice Allsorts) and Maynards (Wine Gums which don't, incidentally, have any wine in them), Hacks cough sweets (excellent for those who have a crushing taste for a cigarette) and Trebor (mints) are all examples of the iconic brands. There are lots more.

The thing about Cadbury is this: it may just be the last great English company.

And that's as good a reason to block the takeover as any.