Cadbury World is a big fat rip-off

When did it become a tradition to organise expensive birthday treats for your children? I don’t want to sound like a character in Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but when I was a boy the most I could hope for on my birthday was a quick game of football with my dad in Highgate Woods. It would have been completely unthinkable for my parents to actually organise a party for me, complete with an entertainer.

Nowadays, any celebration that costs less than £200 is considered child cruelty. And before anyone tells me to ‘check my privilege’, I don’t think this phenomenon is confined to the well off. On the contrary, my guess is that the further you travel down the social scale, the more lavish the children’s birthday parties are. It’s probably only at the very top of the pyramid — in some ageing Duke’s stately home — that kids are still fobbed off with a ticket to the Odeon and a bag of Maltesers.