SOCO

On the evidence of the adverts, people up and down the country are referring to Southern Comfort as ‘SoCo’, with you unable to go into a bar without being surrounded by hordes of people all demanding a SoCo and coke, or some other similarly unimaginative combination, with the bar staff happily acceding to these impolite demands, even suggesting this drink to their clientele without any prompting whatsoever.

Of course, as the slightly more reliable evidence of real life demonstrates, this is about as much the case as claiming people around discussing how you never hear much about Britney Spears these days. No-one has ever, outside of the world of marketing, referred to Southern Comfort as SoCo. They call it Southern Comfort, although most people prefer not to refer to it all. In reality going to a bar and asking for a SoCo and coke is likely to result in a confused looking barman asking you to repeat yourself a couple of times before you give the drink its full name and he responds “Oh, why didn’t you say?”. Should a member of bar staff or, indeed, anyone else in the world, offer you a Southern Comfort, in either its full or abbreviated form, the correct response is not “Yes please!”, but “Umm, is that all you’ve got? Haven’t you got anything I might actually enjoy drinking?”

The advert also appears to imply that the experience of drinking Southern Comfort is akin to the kaleidoscopic effect caused by having shards of glass thrust straight into your eyeball. In this respect, at least, they are correct.