Parallel with the oil price increase, and in the middle of the run-up to Easter, came the threat of another price hike — again thanks to the antics of an African autocrat.

In the former French dominion of the Ivory Coast, the president, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to shift out of his presidential palace, despite having lost an election — according to international observers.

In the ensuing imbroglio he locked up all the nation’s cocoa bean warehouses, which caused waves of concern across the world, since Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa grower, producing a third of the planet’s chocolate.

Prices of cocoa leapt, spreading fears that retail prices would follow suit and squeeze the poor old Easter Bunny worldwide.

As it happened, UN and French air strikes finally ousted Mr Gbagbo — and world prices dropped as a result. But not before some small chocolate suppliers discovered, to their dismay, how quickly international events can affect business here at home.

John Partington, owner and founder of Chocology in Oxford’s Covered Market, said: “I know several people in the world of chocolate who have gone bust recently, including our own label supplier.

“I am reacting by making plenty of special offers. But problems have been threefold: first, there is all the instability caused by the Ivory Coast troubles; second, speculators hoarding cocoa; and third, over the last three years, the rise in the Euro against Sterling.

“And on top of that, there is the recession here, with footfall in Oxford’s Covered Market definitely down.”

Not that any of this is stopping Mr Partington from performing his now famous Easter rabbit duties around Oxford. He will be hiding 50 plastic eggs around the city, each containing a voucher. Anyone presenting one in the shop will receive an egg.

But Mr Partington added: “I understand there is a squeeze on right now, but I have now done as much as I can to keep customers enticed.”

Mr Partington started up in the chocolate selling business in 2000, after visiting a shop full of chocolates — all as beautiful as chocolates can be — in Turin, having previously worked as a beer and flowers buyer for Sainsbury’s.

He said: “I went into that shop in Turin and was hooked. I thought ‘Wow. There is nothing like this in Oxford.’ And I’ve been here ever since.”

His main stock in trade is top quality Belgian chocolates which he sells to individuals, corporations and to the university.

He said: “About 70 per cent of our trade is retail. But we recently supplied BT with 1,000 chocolate telephones, and we produce corporate Easter eggs and Advent calendars.

“And, because we have a van going to Belgium regularly, we also supply other shops.”

He must have been in Italy shortly after that strange period in that country when there was shortage of money itself — and chocolate was often used instead.

I well remember that time when small coins were hard to come by and, as a result, shopkeepers would open their tills to reveal — not boring old money — but instead an array of chocolates, which they would solemnly hand to customers by way of change.

No-one knew why this shortage occurred (some said the coins were sent north to be melted down into metal for watches in Switzerland) but I was reminded of it when discussing the history of chocolate with Mr Partington — who told me that once upon a time in 16th Century central America the Mayan people had used Cocoa beans as currency — and called it Chocolatl.

Now it seems the Euro, at least as far as Mr Partington is concerned, is the official choco currency — in much the same way that the US Dollar is the petro currency.

He buys many of his chocolates in Belgium. One of his heroes is Jean Neuhaus, a Swiss who left his native city of Neûchatel in 1857 to set up business in Brussels — where he perfected the art of making chocolate into a solid (as opposed to a drink) to coat things, such as cough sweets.

Oxfordshire author of the novel The Discovery of Chocolate, James Runcie, has said: “Once it becomes a bar (solid), then it is democratised, an affordable luxury — you only need one chocolate to get the sense of decadence inside you.”

In 19th century England, great Quaker families including Cadbury, Rowntree, and Fry saw chocolate as a weapon in the temperance movement to get people off alcohol.

Casanova, in Venice and Paris, on the other hand, saw it as a weapon in his seduction repertoire, as did the Marquis de Sade and Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. One way or another I cannot see chocolate ever going out of fashion.

Mr Partington said that in addition to the troubles in Ivory Coast, prices had also been pushed up by commodity speculators hoarding beans in the UK.

If so, they will probably get their fingers burned. On Tuesday last week, traders in cocoa futures, who have followed the crisis, found that prices had dipped two per cent to £1,835 a tonne, on the expectation that the situation in the Ivory Coast will soon be resolved.

Here is hoping, on Mr Partington’s behalf, that they continue to fall and only the speculators lose money.