Remember when refilling a plastic water bottle used to be easy? - Vladimir McTavish

It's impossible to buy a bottle where the cap can be properly removed

It was some time last year that, almost overnight, it was impossible to buy a bottle where the cap could be properly removed.

We used to be able to open the bottle, take a mouthful of water and screw the cap back on again.

Not any more. These days, the top is umbilically attached to the neck of the bottle by a thin strip of plastic, which is annoyingly difficult to remove. This must have happened since the last general election or it would have featured in every party’s manifesto.

If you get a bottle of water to drink in the street, the lid keeps flapping in your face every time you try to take a slug. Worse still, try pouring a glassful of orange juice and the lid keeps hanging in the way, and you’re lucky if you don’t spill half of it.

If you try to rip or cut the plastic strip, that just makes things worse as the cap will then not screw back on properly, so the contents leak everywhere.

This now makes it impossible to re-fill plastic water bottles with tap water, something many of us have been doing for years as we thought we were helping the environment.

I always take a bottle of water to work. It always used to be one I had re-filled from the tap. But recently I have been getting to gigs and finding my shoulder-bag soaked or discovering a huge wet streak down my leg or on one occasion, feeling a damp sensation in my trousers.

I have been doing comedy for long enough to know that it’s not a good thing to go on stage looking like you’ve just wet yourself. It sends out all the wrong signals.

I’m sure the drinks industry will claim that this is some kind of environmentally-friendly initiative but the opposite is true, as we’re now forced to buy a new bottle every time.

I suspect that’s the real reason behind the change. Either that or it’s an elaborate practical joke to make me look like I’ve p***ed myself.