I'm a Pepper, He's a Pepper, She's a Pepper....

...if you drink Dr Pepper you're a Pepper too!

That was the slogan of an old 1970s tv ad that I (and maybe you) grew up with, for the strange-tasting soft drink Dr Pepper. Well, in a publicity stunt a few months ago, the company said that if the 17-years-in-the-making-and-subsequent-music-industry-joke new Guns n' Roses album came out this year they would give everyone in America a free bottle of the stuff!

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem is that the album, entitled "Chinese Democracy" is now complete and will be released at the end of November. Oops! Cue emergency board meetings of the Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc...

So around 350 million bottles of Dr Pepper are potentially going to be offered free - available via a downloadable voucher on the company's website when the album is released. I say potentially, because the snag is that the offer will only be on the website for 24 hours.

Never mind being free, you couldn't pay me enough to drink a bottle of Dr Pepper - it's mingin', honkin, or in Belfast-speak, ratten. As someone who spent many wasted teenage hours on my guitar trying to learn to play the intro to the Guns N Roses song "Sweet Child O' Mine", I hope the album's a lot better than the soft drink.

Here's a YouTube clip of the old ad:



Here's the video for Sweet Child O' Mine (from 1988 I think):



And here's some headcase playing the same song using only his hands!...