I was just served in my workplace cafe by a new black guy who's started working here recently. Unfamiliar with the prices, he was checking the list to see how much to charge me. Seeing this, the white woman who runs the cafe called over to him "50p, chocolate".

Mentally I recoiled. Did she just call him what I think she did? My first thought, ridiculously, was that that might actually be his name. Dismissing that, I wondered whether it was his nickname, but in 2008 that seemed highly unlikely - this isn't 'Love Thy Neighbour'. Finally I concluded that she must just have taken it upon herself to bestow upon him this supposedly affectionate but ultimately condescending and racist nickname, and that he was too new and diffident to object.

It was then that I realised I was buying a Mars Bar, and she was telling him how much it was.