Belching Out the Devil Read Online Free Page A

of promotional hip huggers from the Seventies and the jewellery Raquel Welch wore on a Coke modelling shoot.
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    In front of the cabinets, a young woman dressed like a zookeeper in boots, long trousers and a red collared T-shirt, is addressing the crowd with a hand-held cordless mic. She’s probably a perfectly nice girl, but she has all the emotional intonation of a flight stewardess. She must have repeated this spiel countless times leaving her over-familiar with the lines and distant from any meaning they might have. But she musters all the gusto she can and launches into the company schtick one more time.
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    Running through the lines like a chore best done quickly, she says, ‘You’ll be in this room for just a few minutes then the doors either side of me will open and you will be allowed into the,’ she pauses for theatrical effect before proclaiming,
‘Happiness Factory.’ The trouble is she loses interest before she finishes the phrase, so it sounds like ‘HAPPINESS Factory.’ She gulps down some more air before charging on in near-monotone ‘In the Happiness Factory is an approximately six-minute-long animated documentary based on our 2006 Superbowl commercial and it gives you a little glimpse of all the magic that goes into each and every,’ she pauses, ‘Coca-Cola.’
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    I manage to hang on to a couple of facts that she reels out: there are four hundred brands and the logo of the white swoosh on the red background is called the Dynamic Ribbon. Then I hear that our time in the Loft is ‘just a prequel to the rest of your day here’. Frankly, I don’t know which is more alarming: the prospect of staying here for a whole day or the use of the word ‘prequel’ to describe waiting in a room. Next time you’re on hold at the end of a phone waiting for an operator to become available, just remind yourself you are not in a queue but experiencing a prequel.
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    Carla, the woman with the mic, continues by drawing our attention to the fact that the lights have just dimmed, which is the signal that ‘our audio artefacts have cued up, which are basically eighty years’ worth of Coca-Cola jingles. Feel free to sing along to them if you know the words.’ I raise an eyebrow in concern as snippets of ads get blasted at us. The second eyebrow goes up as a mum in tracksuit bottoms starts mouthing ‘Can’t beat the feeling’, while she wanders past the Rachel Welch jewellery. People are joining in, a group of thirty-something men who told me they’re from Florida start on ‘Always Coca-Cola’. I just know that if they play ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing…’ the whole room will burst forth in harmony. Oh fuck, I’m in a cult - this is what the Hari Krishnas would be like if they took sugar in their chai.

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    The doors to the cinema open and I move rather too quickly through them and into a large auditorium with raked seating. There about twenty-five of us dotted around the empty space facing a big cinema screen, in front of which a tour guide called John stands grasping a microphone. ‘I’m here to welcome you to Happiness Factory and living on the Coke side of life, and having fun is what it’s all about,’ he says, adding ‘Now I understand we have a birthday in the house’, at which one of the Florida thirty-pluses delivers a half-hearted cheer. ‘So let’s all sing happy birthday after three. One. Two. Three. Happy Birthday to you…’
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    The audience, such as we are, mumble through Happy Birthday, while John throws himself into his mirthless task. If by bizarre chance anyone were ever to ask me, ‘What do you think it would be like to be taken hostage by Ronald McDonald?’
    I can reply, ‘I have a vague idea.’
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    â€˜OK,’ shouts John, ‘How many of you have seen the commercial “Inside the Happiness