Astonishing how things can pass one by. There was I thinking that Black Label is a whisky when in fact it's a series of phones. The new LG "Secret" KF750 (free on contract, dependent on tariff: lgmobile.com, 0870 873 5454) is one of a line of LG mobiles dubbed Black Label, previously featuring the "Chocolate" and the "Shine". Ah yes, chocolate. Another bell going off there ... is it Ghirardelli's Black Label chocolate sauce, or just Black Magic misremembered?
Something semiotic is going down, in any case. More or less everything about the Secret is sleek, black and sexy. Unpacking it, you feel as if you're engaging in a hotel-room tryst with a mysterious, elegantly dressed stranger. The thing is so erotically charged, it should have been called the LG Secrete. Marketing job done, then? Well, not quite.
The comparators bear examination. What a fine nip is Johnny Walker Black Label – acclaimed masterpiece of blending, favourite of Winston Churchill, "at once powerful, intense and unassailably elegant" as the company's literature puts it.
Experts agree. "Very few malts can match this for complexity," says Jim Murray, author of Classic Blended Scotch (1999). "This is the Savoy, the Everest, of deluxe whiskies."
Ghirardelli products, meanwhile, deliver "moments of timeless pleasure", being crafted to achieve "the perfect chocolate intensity". Its website shows a woman in the throes of chocolate ecstasy: such open-mouthed, shut-eyed rapture not seen since Bernini's statue of St Theresa.
The commercial language of the LG Secret borrows from chocolate, whisky and luxury goods rhetoric in general: "Boasting style that lasts, the LG Secret has been specifically developed to satisfy the refined tastes of trendsetters who desire a sophisticatedly designed, yet durable handset. Following the success of its predecessors... this third model from the LG Black Label Series is as feature rich as it is stylish."
Like the pleasure induced by Ghirardelli chocolate, the Secret's features are presented as timeless: a carbon fibre and tempered glass casing ("timeless style"); a five megapixel camera and the ability to take video at 120 frames a second ("timeless memories"); multimedia functions including music, photos, games, documents and FM radio ("timeless entertainment"). Alas, there is no eBook reader function, with which time-exempt users might catch up on Latin proverbs. Like memento mori, say, or carpe diem.
The LG Secret has many top specifications. But its principal innovation – the combination of a slide-out keypad with a glass touchpad – simply does not work very well. The touchpad is a sort of halogen hob (between the screen proper and the keypad), rather than a full, iPhone-style touchscreen. It seems like intermediate technology to me. This is confirmed by the constant need to use an old-fashioned metal return/action button that rises like Uluru out of the glass.
The maker of the Secret is Korean-based LG Electronics which, according to its representative, has recently overtaken Sony Ericsson as the fourth biggest handset manufacturer in the world. I am sure they're all super fellows down at LG HQ (they sponsor Fulham FC), but others are not yet convinced. Technology site unwiredview.com has accused another LG phone on the horizon, the LG Dare, of being an "iPhone knock-off". Who'll dare say that when BlackBerry's touchscreen device, the BlackBerry Thunder, comes out?
I couldn't possibly comment on any of this, but another semiotic bell has just tinkled. It's Carling Black Label, of course, now reduced to plain Carling for snappier cross-bar ordering. LG should be careful with whom it mixes: when Carling Black Label was first sold in Britain in 1954 (by the inestimable Carling Kuntz Ltd) and prior to that in North America, the Black Label signalled not deluxe but economy.
· Stephen Fry returns later this month.