Bristol’s biscuit of choice is the Rich Tea biscuit, which makes me never want to visit Bristol in my life. Bristol’s favourite biscuit – out of all the biscuits, remember, on Earth – is the Rich Tea, which is the sickly, pale cousin of the plain digestive. Think of the digestive family as three popular brothers at school: the dark chocolate is the eldest, destined to study medicine at Durham; the milk chocolate is sporty and fast and captain of the football team; the plain digestive is young and unproven but all the teachers know his surname because of his brothers and secretly have high hopes. And the Rich Tea is the nerd cousin who just got stuffed in his own backpack and thrown in a bin.

I’m not only disappointed in you, Bristol. Because most of Britain’s biscuit choices – revealed this week in a Waitrose food and drink survey – show a fundamental national short-sightedness and lack of ambition. In central England, Waitrose says, the favourite biscuit is the malted milk. The malted milk. Imagine the kind of sociopath who, when presented with a mixed tray of biscuit options, actively gravitates towards the malted milk. They have first pick of the biscuits. There’s a coconut cookie there, a milk chocolate oval here. There’s a massive pink wafer. “No,” they think. “No flavour for me, thanks.” And then their dull little fingers pick out a malted milk, and dip it in some wan tea. I cannot ever in my lowest moments imagine hating myself as much as that, and yet as best I can tell, that is what every single person in Leicester is doing, every second of every day.

East Anglia’s favourite biscuit is “something healthy”; Yorkshire favours a custard cream. Things perk up in Brighton – eclectic Brighton, with the world’s highest concentration of fun mums wearing those weird furry cardigans you only ever otherwise see at 7am at Glastonbury – where they favour the KitKat. Wales and the south-west, two areas where you’d think they might need some joy occasionally, again prefer the Rich Tea. In a sign of gentrification gone so mad it’s pushed through and become boring, Londoners are bang into Belvita.

The north-east and Scotland are the only ones holding up the biscuit preference charts with anything even approaching eclecticism and dignity, and for that I thank them deeply. Aside from the Brighton enclave, the north-east is the only region that actively prefers chocolate biscuits over all others, just as our holy father intended biscuit preferences to be, as well as being partial to a ginger nut. Scotland, high on a wave of patriotic revivalism presumably spurred on by the SNP surge and the general existence of Andy Murray, sticks firmly to its roots: Tunnock’s tea cakes and shortbread.

But then, of course, this is all subjective, because this is based on Waitrose shoppers’ biscuit-buying patterns and Waitrose shoppers, by and large, have given up. You don’t imagine bungee jumping and casual heroin use are on the agenda for the average Waitrose shopper, do you? The average Waitrose shopper says things like: “Come on, Roy, which hummus should we get this week? I fancy a change.” The average Waitrose shopper was genuinely outraged when they put restrictions on the free tea and coffee myWaitrose card offer, because that’s all the hope they had left. The average Waitrose shopper favours not the delights of a chocolate-coated biscuit, or a big old deck of bourbons, but instead literally prefers a malted milk. The average Waitrose shopper is devoid of ambition and rinsed of desire.

I just find it odd that – in a country so obsessed with afternoon tea and putting a few little biscuits on a plate and sitting down in a comfy chair and watching Countdown – our biscuit preferences are so safe, so unremarkable, so malted milk. Americans are insane at biscuits and yet the Oreo revolution is yet to be fully embraced over here. You can buy Mikado in virtually every shop in Britain now, and still we deviate inevitably towards the mediocrity of Nice. You can buy biscuits studded with Smarties and covered in thick dark chocolate, but still we buy the most beige biscuits possible. Close your eyes and imagine the most exciting British biscuit. It is the Party Ring. We shouldn’t be allowed nice things.

But then maybe this is just indicative of the wider British id. Our relationship with biscuits is our relationship with ourselves: we both love boring things and think they are all we deserve. We like watching Grand Designs and listening to Michael Bublé. We like talking about weather and thinking about weather and considering the impact the weather might have on our lawns, which we also love. We love the heck out of lawns. Will the man with the ride-on lawnmower and a special lawn ruler choose a heavily chocolated biscuit? He will not: he is a plain digestive man. Will the lady with the collection of porcelain cats choose a Cadbury Finger over a Fox’s Crinkle Crunch? She would rather go home and have a plain slice of bread, thanks. Love yourself a bit more, Britain. Have a Jaffa Cake, at least.