Another firm that hasn’t done so well in the customer trust stakes is Coca-Cola GB, which is throwing £3 million into next month’s UK launch of its successful American Glaceau Smartwater brand of eau into the £1.4 billion bottled water market here.

For those recalling Coke’s humiliating 2004 marketing disaster with Dasani – it turned out to be 95 pence a bottle Sidcup tap water with a dash of carcinogenic bromate – the firm has promised that its new eau will really be The Real Thing and based on its Abbey Well spring water from Northumberland with an added dash of non-carcinogenic electrolytes, to give it a “clean and crisp” taste.

Coke suffered a gleeful kicking in the British press over Dasani with many pointing out that the episode bore comparison with an episode of the Only Fools and Horses TV sit-com where Peckham chancers Del Boy and Rodney bottled tap water and tried to sell it as “Peckham Spring”.