OPINION: Mills on ... Rolo.

One of my pet hates are those pointless PR-generated survey stories that pass for news. 'New survey shows men think about sex every two minutes.' 'D-I-Y better than sex, B&Q survey shows.' Yeah, tell me something I don't know.

You don't have to dig very deep to find out that, behind all these spurious surveys, someone is trying to sell us something. There must be thousands of these damned surveys going on every week. But have you ever met anyone who's ever been asked a question for one of them? Of course not: they make them up, don't they?

So when I read newspaper reports last month that seven out of ten women think humour is four times more important than romance in a relationship, there was something entirely predictable about the fact that it happened to be based on a 'survey' for Rolo. Equally predictably, the attendant PR round this apparently little-known fact has been used to kick off a new campaign for Rolo, and to justify the axing of the famous 'do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?' line, which has clearly been ruled old-fashioned and therefore in need of contemporisation.

What a shame. I liked the line, not least because it was based on the romantic gesture and the joy of sharing, ideas all too rare these days.

This is especially true in snack and confectionery advertising, where so many campaigns are based on the inflated premise that product X is so good you'll scoff the lot yourself, thus justifying selfishness. By dint of that difference alone, Rolo stood out.

The basic premise could also, on occasion, be put to a higher moral purpose, as demonstrated by the Cannes gold winner in 1996. A child watches a parade of circus elephants. As a baby elephant passes, the boy offers and then withdraws his last Rolo. We move forward 25 years and the boy, now grown up, is again watching a ...