During my wasted life, I’ve drunk quite a bit of beer and read quite a lot of philosophical logic. But neither had prepared me for the poster for Young’s bitter that I saw recently at a bus shelter. The slogan read: “If beer drank, it would drink Young’s.”

Can a beer, I asked myself, drink? Even if it could, why would it drink beer? Wouldn’t it prefer a smoothie? And if not, why not? Are beers temperamentally cannibalistic? Is this supposed to reassure me as I raise a pint to my lips? How does this beer drink? Through its mouth? What are its lips made of? Beer, you’d suppose.