Four decades since the documentary Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory first aired, few have stopped to consider what the orange-skinned factory workers, commonly known as “Oompa-Loompas” (although this term is now regarded as derogatory), are doing with their utterly changed lives. Following the release of a “warts-and-all” memoir by Graham Adams, one of the most senior workers in the plant at the height of the 1970s chocolate boom, which paints Wonka and his close associate Slugworth (who passed away some years after the documentary in prison) as sex-obsessed pederasts, the six remaining former workers have taken a multi-million euro lawsuit against their employer, citing bizarre allegations of “chocolatey buggery” and “gob-stopping”.
Wonka could not be reached for comment but a close friend, who asked not to be named, has admitted that he is “taking his cocaine and seeing no one”, holed up in the now decrepit factory.
All of the living workers claim that the decades since the factory’s demise have been filled with anguish and self-loathing, traumatised by the sick events that occurred during the boom years. Adams, 72, seems unable to control his seething rage for the man he was once forced to call “Daddy”. A close friend of Paul McGrath, the legendary Irish footballer, since his days volunteering as McGrath’s sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous in the ‘90s, Adams has battled his demons successfully and says he found writing the book cathartic. “It was a horrible period of our lives. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” he confesses. “Seven of my former colleagues committed suicide over the years and everyone else has had a hard struggle […] Did you know that I’m infertile?” Wonka refused to allow anyone else to work in his factory, maintaining that he feared “industrial espionage”, but the tell-all book reveals that his fetish for the men’s astonishing haircuts and sallow skin tone was a more compelling motive.
Jobless and with little hope for the future, the men have turned to various pitiful methods of finding meaning in their lives. Jeff Hand, 67, who divorced from his wife many years ago, has recently fallen victim to the devastating “legal high” mephedrone, an increasingly popular synthetic drug which is said to produce similar feelings of euphoria to that of cocaine and ecstasy, and admits that he feels his life is like an “empty Malteser”. “Wonka is a crook,” he says, cutting himself another line of the heady powder. “All of the fantastical sweets that he went on about in the documentary were a complete fabrication. We were the ones who had to repair the hole in the glass ceiling when he broke it with that prick Charlie. We were the ones who took the blame for the way he callously murdered and disfigured those kids who came into the factory. You know?” He refuses to discuss the alleged sexual offences, but admits that he has zero confidence with regard to wooing women or establishing intimate relationships.
Shunned from society since their entry to the outside world, most have since bleached their skin and learned to talk without singing. Paid only in cacao beans while working in the factory, they received a risible severance package following Wonka’s bankruptcy scandal when the huge chocolate economic bubble collapsed in the ‘80s, caused by inflationary prices and numerous chocolate-related deaths. AJ Byrne, the lead singer in the group seen frequently in the documentary, released a rap single soon after resigning, attempting to cash in on his short-lived fame. “Chocolate Dick”, brought out under Byrne’s alias Brother Orange, failed to make any lasting memories in the charts and was described by one critic as “a veritable cause for another genocide”. Sadly, he died the next year following complications during a brain tumour operation. He is survived by his son, who has established an unsuccessful charity foundation for the former workers.
According to Adams’s book, Nothing Sweet About It: Tales from a Chocolate Sweat Shop, Wonka routinely performed “gob-stopping” sex-acts on his employees, often in his dark river tunnel, but most were too afraid to report him to the authorities. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; Wonka kept his employees in the factory at all times since birth and consequently few knew any different. Naturally, Wonka has dismissed all allegations of any wrong-doing and insists that anything that happened in the factory was just “confectionary banter”.
Whatever the veracity of the bold claims made in Adams’s shocking prose, it is difficult to defend such an evidently psychotic chocolatier. Wonka once famously announced to a terrified boat audience “We are the dreamers of dreams”; perhaps he was right, but one suspects that only the unfortunate orange men will ever know the full truth of what went on in that factory so many years ago.
