There was a time when coffee was meat and drink to stand-up comedians. All a comic had to do was mention a “tall skinny frappuccino”, and audiences would fall about laughing. After all, everyone knew that when it came to coffee, there were only two questions that had to be answered: “Black or white?” and “How many sugars?” Anything else was gobbledegook. But what the mochachino mockers didn’t understand was that the language of coffee was one key factor in its resurgence.
The fact that the UK now drinks more coffee than tea - and Lyons tea houses are less common than actual lions in the UK’s high streets - has as much to do with buzzwords as caffeine buzz.