Iced Tea

I want to say a few words about Iced Tea. It has been brought to my attention that there are a number of people in the world who actually drink it. And indeed choose to do so. I just want to say that in case these people haven’t noticed, It’s cold tea. Cold tea. Cold. Tea. Really. Did you know that? Why, oh why would anyone drink cold tea? It’s a bit like tea, but it’s cold. I mean I’m not sure I can reiterate this strongly enough. It’s cold tea.

Tea is in and of itself a refreshing drink. I mean when it’s drunk as it’s meant to be drunk – hot. It doesn’t need to be cold to be refreshing, and when it’s cold it’s just disgusting. I guess it’s a triumph of marketing, selling cold tea to anyone, but it seems to be working. Bogi, for example, has recently been converted thanks (in part at least) to an ad that’s on right now which features an Italian woman walking round with her husband complaining about being too hot, while other men of the town gaze covetously on her heaving bosom. Her husband tries desperately to get her to cover herself until he finally takes her to a café and orders a Nestea, which she sips, allowing the drink to spill from her mouth onto the aforementioned heaving bosom. (In the mind of an almost 6 year old who is mildly obsessed by the impending arrival of a sibling, this is actually iced tea emerging from those breasts, as milk will soon be emerging, fascinatingly, from her mother’s). Now this advert manages, incredibly, to link iced tea with sex. Can two things be further removed from one another? The English, it is often said, would rather drink tea than have sex, and I suspect in many cases this is indeed true. The point of the observation, though, is to contrast the most unsexy passionless possible activity (tea drinking) with the least (sex itself). If there is one thing that could conceivably be considered even more unsexy than tea drinking it surely must be drinking cold tea. Tea. That’s cold.

Which cretin first let their tea go cold, and on picking up the cup and drinking it didn’t spit it out going “urrrrggghhhh” and instead said “mmmmm”? Really. The world’s gone mad. Mad.