The teacake must be fully unwrapped. Admire that delicate sheen on the chocolate, that sparkle of surrounding silver. Raise that teacake reverentially and bite a neat surgical slice of that crisp shell. Scoop out some of the white fluffy interior. Then to the rest of the shell and finally that delicious biscuit base. I will accept regional variations on the etiquette. The Tunnock’s Tea is not some one-bite American cookie. It is a meditative moment, a treat for the ages, very much the Scottish riposte to the Japanese tea ceremony. It stands nobly beside its mighty stablemates, the Wafer, the Log and the Snowball. A veritable arsenal of deliciousness so seductive that the government has decided we shouldn’t see them advertised, because we are all getting fat and it’s Tunnocks fault. Scotland’s waistlines are undoubtedly expanding. You only have to fight through the bulging bodies narrowing the aisles of our buses to realise we’re a nation who stopped watching our weight. But blaming the teacake and her cousins for this is a bit rich. Tunnock’s have been banging out the teatime treats since the middle of the last century, but the big belly expansion is a fairly recent phenomenon. Taking the teacake off the airwaves won’t help. They’re on the shelves, as they should be. Of course, the government could always go full fag packet and insist that all Tunnock’s products should now come in plain paper wrapping. Or have them only stocked behind the counter. Or under the counter, like 1950’s naughty mags, and take us back to the days of asking the shop assistant for ‘got anything more fluffy core, mate?’ Wink, wink. Diet is only half of this story. Exercise is the crucial other half. While finger wagging experts lecture us on what we eat, leisure centres, swimming pools and sports centres are being closed faster than bank branches. Leave the teacake, the wafer and the snowball alone. Stop telling us what we can’t eat and start helping us get fit.