Choc till you drop

Most of us know “Death by Chocolate” as an outlandish dessert, but the recent story of Polly the Patterdale Terrier, who narrowly survived after chomping her way through a plate of chocolate cakes, begs the question – is death by chocolate actually possible?

For dogs, chocolate is poisonous – it contains theobromine, which can lead to internal bleeding, heart attacks and other potentially fatal reactions.

Squirrels apparently don’t get on to well with the good stuff either. Elizabeth Taylor says she never quite got over losing Nibbles, her pet squirrel, when the actress was a teenager. Nibbles found young Liz’s stash of Easter eggs and helped himself – she later discovered the thieving rodent lying dead next to a half-eaten egg.

But what about people? There’s an urban myth that Robert Hershey, founder of Hershey’s Chocolate, died after falling into a vat of the stuff, but this remains frustratingly unconfirmed. However there's at least one recorded case of this actually happening – in 2002 a 19-year old in Philadelphia drowned in 1200 gallons of dairy milk.

Apart from drowning in it, people can be allergic to chocolate – celebrity sufferers include, Latoya Jackson who says she will die if she ever eats it. Happy Easter, Latoya!