A woman who is paid to work with Cadbury chocolate every day says it's 'just like being Willy Wonka'.
Donna Oluban stepped onto the floor of her new job 20 years ago as she got to work sculpting the most bizarre chocolate creations in what she calls 'the best job ever'. The 59-year-old works Cadbury World in Birmingham and can make pretty much anything out of chocolate, from dinosaurs to aeroplanes, the moon landing to William Shakespeare.
Donna looks forward to go to her work every morning. She told Birmingham Live: "It's the best job I've ever had and I have been here for 20 years. There was an advert for the job in the Birmingham Mail so I went to the open day and saw a demonstration.
"I thought: 'I could do that'. They start you off with a working buddy and then you learn on the job. The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming smell of chocolate from the big tanks. It fills the air, I had never seen so much chocolate in my life.
"You have to be artistic and creative as you will decorate with a piping bag a lot and everything is hand-made. Luckily I went to art school and you didn't need a degree as all training is done on the job."
On a typical day Donna and her team will create plaques, teapots, shoes and other chocolate items for the shop or personalised gifts. Workers put on their hairnets, white jumpsuits and operate their machinery for the day.
It can take up to three days to finish a big job. The most meticulous creations have included a baby diplodocus in time for the Birmingham leg of 'Dippy on Tour', the giant recreation of a dino skeleton which used to sit in the Natural History Musuem.
The team's unluckiest moment came when a custom chocolate aeroplane for Birmingham Airport dropped its wings thanks to a bumpy journey. Scrambling to fix the piece, they created chocolate clouds to stick under the wings for support.
Donna said her wackiest structures had been Halloween-themed, including a skeleton coming out of the grave, an octopus and huge spider.
She said: "We don't really sketch anything or think about measurements. We just think about how we are going to do it by eye and look at the shapes. We have a box of household items such as biscuit containers or yoghurt pots as moulds.
"For Christmas we did a traditional log fire with Santa Claus, we used trifle pots for candle holders and plastic soufflé cups for the fire grate."
She laughed: "The only ache you get is from laughing so hard your stomach hurts, it is such a fun job.
"The other day we heard some people outside the factory talking about us saying: 'Everyone here must love their jobs because they wont stop smiling.' That was so nice to hear. Most people think we just sit and eat chocolate all day and that's not true. I'm staying put unless they fire me."
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