Chavez gets a taste for Willie’s wonky chocolate

The uber-Sloane Ranger Willie Harcourt-Cooze has run up against the flamboyant socialist ruler of oil-rich Venezuela. Hugo Chavez has called for an inquiry into the activities of Harcourt-Cooze (pictured with wife Tania), star of the Channel 4 programme Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory, who owns 1,000 acres of land in Venezuela, on which, over the last decade, he has planted 10,000 cacao trees.

The trees, he says, have produced "the finest, rarest and most expensive cacao in the world". He exports it to his farm in Devon where he makes Venezuelan black chocolate. It has proved successful - individual bars sell for £7 in Selfridges.

Chavez, whose mentor is Fidel Castro, became aware of this and has now demanded an investigation into the pushy British entrepreneur. On his weekly television programme, Hello President, Chavez told his agriculture and defence ministers: "Find out who this William Harcourt-Cooze is and how many hectares he has."

According to the Daily Telegraph, Chavez believes his country would be better served if the chocolate was processed by Venezuelan companies and workers' co-operatives. In his broadcast, he added: "The production and distribution is done from his factory in Devon, England, and this gentleman is getting rich. We cannot continue exporting cacao, we have to process it, industrialise it."

Harcourt-Cooze is the not the first Briton to find his assets under threat in Venezuela. In 2005, the Vestey Group saw one of its estates seized. It looks like curtains for Wonka. ·