When I was in my final year at university, one good friend managed by a combination of good fortune and dire intoxication to acquire a girlfriend. Now I'm sure he'd had girlfriends before; he was from a wealthy family after all, and wasn't a bad raconteur as well, but in the weeks thereafter he defined the idiom, "a dog with two tails".

Time passed and it became apparent that this wasn't to be a flash-in-the-bedroom kind of an affair. This relationship had Potential-with-a-capital-pee. I've no idea about the pee by the way. They might have been into that, but thankfully spared the rest of us the gory details. So a few months of double-dates, dinners, drinks and deserved ridicule for the pathetic wuvvy-dovey tone my friend's voice took whenever on the phone to her, Valentine's Day loomed.

My friend took it all far too seriously. He spent DAYS researching the ideal, unique, one-of-a-kind present to give to his belle; one that spoke of his devotion, his originality, his faith in their relationship. "Bingo" he might have cried, though I forget, as he spots an advert for a jeweller somewhere in the middle of Derbyshire.

What he found was a place that sold beautifully crafted, life size, perfect in every detail solid silver Rolos.

I completely failed to understand the significance of Rolos, which prompted him and several others to give me an improvised comedy performance of a run of Rolo adverts from the 1980s and early 90s, well before I ever got my first passport, culminating in the line, "do you love someone enough to give them your last Rolo?"

Thus enlightened, and because the sun was shining, I decided to join my friend on his junket to the hills below the Peak District to buy the crafted confectionery. It was a pleasant day out, with lunch in a place called Burton (very pretty) with beer (very tasty) and a game of "spot the speed trap" on the way home.

So the big day arrived. My friend had also bought a tube of real, edible Rolos, dropped one out of the end of the roll, replacing it with the low-calorie version, and carefully rewrapped them. His belle, who was on a perpetual diet as all girls seem to be, was less than impressed by his stingy and unimaginative gift, but he seemed so earnest, she gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Well chocolate seems to do something to ladies. It seems to have the same effects as heroin, or vigorous sex has on men. A couple of Rolos later she was in "the zone", happily snatching her chocolatey chunk during their game of "one for you and one for me". Just a little too enthusiastically. My friend didn't quite manage to stop her from popping the last Rolo into her mouth.

<CRUNCH> "OUCH!"

So after calming her down, making sure her teeth in fact were all intact and explaining that this eternal Rolo was in fact her St. Valentine's gift, not to mention forking over the real Rolo as consolation, my friend managed finally to win his girl's heart.

I haven't seen my university friends for a long time as travel, work and my own family have all demanded my time, but I understand that to this day, she wears a silver Rolo on a chain around her neck. And if you look very closely, you can still see the tooth marks.

What relevance to chocolate bullets? Well it occurred to me that if my friend's belle had turned out to be an unpleasant, blood-sucking horror, their relationship having started with a silver Rolo would have to finish with a chocolate bullet.