The UK population spent £8 million pounds on chocolate fountains, last year.

You didn’t misread that. The Guardian says so, anyway, on the basis of a report by GfK Marketing Services (Guardian G2 print, page 10. Cant be bothered to look online for a reference sorry. You’ll have to take my word for it. It is obviously deeply spurious, but for the purposes of a rant, I am going to treat it as if it were fact.)

Could a kitchen gadget scream “pre-revolutionary French aristocracy” more loudly than that?

Rephrasing an old quotation (that I am too idle to reference right now) “A kitchen chocolate fountain is the universe’s way of telling you that you have WAY WAY too much money.”

Plus I would add “And if you have bought one, please cull yourself now, for the good of the species’ gene pool ……”