When I was young I spent rather too much time in Great Ormond Street Hospital For Sick Children in London. The hospital was fantastic and I’ve no doubt I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them, but even as a child I knew that me being sick was often harder on my parents than it was on me.

While in hospital, my parents would make a daily hundred mile round trip to come and see me. As if having a sick child wasn’t enough, they had the stress and expense of spending half their lives traveling.

It’s for these very personal reasons that I’ve been keen to support the charity The Sick Children’s Trust. The trust was founded at Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1982 when I was 12 and has a simple objective; to provide a safe, comfortable place for parents to stay while their child is in hospital. It’s a little thing that makes a huge difference in people’s lives.

So why am I telling you all this on a chocolate blog? Well, every year the trust organises The Big Chocolate Tea Party, an opportunity for anyone to help raise funds and have a lot of fun in the process.

The idea is simple, you host a chocolate tea party with friends, family, at work, or wherever you want. You eat cake, drink tea and collect what you can for this fantastic cause.