There is a science to luck. I mean, take those so impoverished that they have to share a helicopter with another family. Tragic, eh? They could be deemed unlucky in life. But odds can be coaxed and cajoled.

Guys, write this down. The following is a tried and tested method – devised by me in my heyday as a bachelor – for having fun with girls. And it can work in either conversation or text messaging. Ready?

OK, so you ask a few innocuous choice questions to get warmed up. For example, does she prefer red or white wine? Chicken or fish? Then, just when she’s thinking you’re a punctilious ass and is regretting that impulse buy of saucy underwear, you throw a curve ball. We can’t have the poor poppet forever bewailing her dissatisfaction in the boudoir, can we?

Make Your Move

No, we jolly well can’t. So, that’s when you look her in the eye and say ‘Chocolate or sex?’ Naturally, unless you’ve chosen a hooker on her lunch break, or your mottled temptress is in her eighties, her cheek will mantle with shame. She’ll demurely mumble ‘The second one’, or words to that effect.

Your pithy rejoinder? ‘Naughty girl! Well, there’s a Twix in the fridge just in case.’ Works every time. Well, it used to, but I daresay in modern day, binge-drinking England, your turtledove might very well turn the tables by sassily crushing her cigarette with a stiletto heel, and saying ‘Depends how big your cock is.’ Course, if she just says ‘chocolate’, you’re fucked as well.

Right, well how was that for an introduction to Turin’s chocolate industry? Yes, perhaps a little elaborate. But then so are the delicacies here. Even more so at Easter when the chocolatiers’ window displays are bulging with hand-crafted marvels.

Piemont’s Gianduia Cream

Girls, write this down. Forget Belgium and Switzerland; Turin’s Gianduiotto chocolate is yummy. To give you the bare history, during the Napoleonic wars, when England’s powerful fleet was hampering sea transport like the dickens, there was a scant supply of cocoa in these parts. Did the chocolate makers puff their cheeks, succumbing to despondent lachrymosity? No, they showed spunk and resourcefulness, adding toasted hazelnuts to make up the deficit. 

Anyway, now we’ve got the sex out of the way, let me take you to Cafe Mulassano for a chocolatey, post-coital treat. It’s the sort of olde-worlde haven where one’s croissants arrive on silver platters to marble-topped tables. Marble being sturdyish, you’d think, then, that a mere brush with my thigh wouldn’t have dislodged a top from its exquisite wrought-iron stand. Whoopsydaisies. Pesky things, tables.

Stockinged feet..

Comfortable in those heels, by the way? Kick ‘em off if you like – I’ll distract the waiter. And then I’ll order you a bicerino. God, not another Italian coffee, you groan? Ah, but this one is special. The French writer Alexandre Dumas, on a visit to Turin in 1852, wrote ‘…in Torino, I shall never fail to remember bicerin, an excellent beverage consisting of coffee, milk and chocolate that is available from all bars and cafes at a relatively modest cost.’

Cafe Mulassano, before I forget, is also responsible for importing the first toaster from the US in 1925. The significance being? The toasted sandwich duly arrived in Turin. Hooray! Actually, that’s not very interesting, is it? Let’s head back to the room instead – the Bollinger should’ve chilled nicely by now. Oh, you are insatiable, Darling – I see the Twix is still unopened..