Walking through Birmingham New Street station at the end of last week I shuddered. Above the general station cacophony the ‘revolutionary cry’ was clearly audible. A small promotions team had a stand set up and were giving away Trident Gum as I knew they would.

I knew they would because back in January, as part of ‘the project of which we could not speak’, we played our part in an internals sales conference that explained to a large number of Cadbury employees how Trident would be launched; ‘give-aways’ at major railway stations were all part of the plan.

Hearing these slogans chanted by those other than our close band of conscripts felt peculiar, as if a personal secret had been shouted out in public. I felt complicit and yet distanced from this sales pitch. Seeing the ‘real life’ manifestation of what, for us, had been a script was oddly uncanny – for a week we were Prophets of Confectionary.

James