HERE at the Mahogany Ridge any sort of posh wine on our shelves is known simply as a Pinochet. This is because, like any good Latin American despot, the bottle has been festooned with an array of gold and silver medals to scare us into believing it's superior muck.
From time to time, there is talk of stretching the joke to a Videla or a Stroessner, but nothing beats the ring of the late Chilean dictator's name. It even rhymes with chardonnay.
Besides, once you tire of rummaging in the old juntas for boozy appropriations, your attention soon drifts towards our national affairs and in no time at all you'll have at your disposal a whole new lexicon with which to amuse your sodden pals.
A Jacob Zuma, for example, is the fourth double brandy-and-coke, the one that has you lurching off to bother the women at the other end of the bar. A Mac Maharaj, meanwhile, is the fifth brandy, the one that compels you to return to the women to explain the context of what you tried to say in the first place. This invariably makes things worse - and you risk some outraged harridan tossing her Pinochet in your face.
Which brings us, fittingly, to the national police commissioner, General Riah Phiyega, who has invited us to throw mud at her.
It's a challenge of sorts, because she believes that, no matter how hard we try, dirt refuses to have anything to do with her. It's as she's made out of teflon or leftover bits of Ronald Reagan. Which, when you think about it, is odd because the Phiyega, in Ridge-speak, is a sticky, sweet cocktail, one that quite uniquely tastes rather better coming up than it does going down.