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Last year, according to this programme, people started noticing their Freddos had shrunk. I'd imagine they found this distressing. Maybe not as distressing as if their Speedos had done likewise, but probably not far off. Freddos, of course, are frog-shaped bars of chocolate, made from Cadbury's Dairy Milk, designed to appeal to an increasingly influential consumer demographic who want their snacks to resemble pond life.

What happened, we're told, is they started getting noticeably smaller. In 2025 they shrank by 20% (the Freddo bars did, I mean, not the members of the public. Members of the public who eat chocolate tend to get bigger, as I can personally testify).

Owing to the soaring cost of cocoa butter, a key ingredient, Cadbury faced three options: put their prices up, change their product's recipe or give us less for our money. They chose option three, making this a further example of what's come to be known as "shrinkflation" - ie. where we're charged the same money for a smaller version of the same item.

We used to be told that was just our imagination, didn't we - that the chocolate bars etc. we enjoyed as kids weren't really any bigger than they are now, that this was merely a rose-tinted reminiscence. But, yep, it seems they really were. This now makes me wonder if other so-called myths from my childhood were also spot-on. I'm certainly convinced there's a malodorous monster lurking for real beneath our bed, although our puppy's not yet house trained so I guess that could be another explanation.

Also jolly clever, Cadbury have been reducing the number of items in their multi-packs. You only get four Curly Wurlys these days; you used to get five. All the while, rivals McVitie's have been taking a different tack, tinkering with the actual recipes of biscuits like Penguin and Club.

"If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club!" the song from an old TV advert used to go. These days they'd have to sing: "If you like your biscuit to have a 'milk chocolate flavoured coating'...," which wouldn't sound nearly as appealing. Nor would it fit the old tune.

It's all a bit depressing. Penguin biscuits, meanwhile, must now contain no penguin.

DI Humphrey Goodman has a lot on his plate. There's local fisherman Jeff Simmons, for example, telling one and all that he spotted a mermaid while out on his boat in the early hours. Splashing about in the water, she was, not far from the local seaweed farm (be honest, we never used to get storylines this great in The Bill). And she wasn't just any old mermaid, either, but Shipton Abbott's very own. Apparently, she's legendary. So there's that, plus the big cost-cutting decision Humphrey's been given only days to make, as to which of his team must be sacrificed. Just job-wise, I hasten to add.

First through the doors of Fred's restaurant tonight is Sophie, 30, from Walsall. Sophie is sure her ideal man is out there somewhere. "I think everyone's got a twin flame," she says, "one soul that's been split into two people." With that in mind, she insists that whoever she's been paired with has to be "someone that's into the same sort of weird things that I'm into, like astrology, astronomy, things like that..." Which seems reasonable, right? So is there anything else she'd care to mention, before she meets her date? "I do like them to look a bit like they might have been to prison," she adds.