I had a free breakfast presented to me on my walk into work yesterday. Someone had kindly left a half eaten kebab on top of the pedestrian crossing button pad. Chilli sauce dripping down....nice. About as unappetising and unattended as Gordon Ramsay's neglected restaurant empire.

On arrival into work still suffering from the lingering cold virus, and now slightly queasy, I checked my email. There was my OED (Oxford English Dictionary) 'Word of the Day' mail that I subscribe to, which helps illuminate forgotten corners of my language.

'nasal'

Great. It was going to be a good morning. Someone at OED was having a seasonal sneeze.

How could I lift my mood? Well apparently the right colour is the way forward. A wacky story appeared in the 'online soon to be pay-per-view' papers about how red and blue ambient lighting can improve the taste of wine, probably due to a positive mood effect. Just as unscrupulous bar owners may serve a gin and tonic as pure tonic with the rim of a glass dipped in gin, they may now also use the right lighting to trick you into paying more for very average wine.

Red light delivered a sweeter and more fruity wine (it also is know to deliver lots of other sweet and fruity things that we shall not dwell on here..). Blue and red light can make customers pay more for a bottle.

Note that this is not about changing the colour of the wine in the glass, just the background lighting. The trick here is to make sure you buy good wine so it does not need a helping hand. Perhaps it is even a hindrance if you have say a nice minerally crisp dry white wine that is turned into Liebfraumilch at the flick of a switch. A dumbing down.

Why wine in particular? Surely this science applies to everything.

Maybe I should invest in a pair of red lensed glasses and be in permanent happy stupor? So that's why Ozzy Osbourne always seems so spaced. I want to meet his fairies.

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