I picked up what I thought was a diet coke in Bournemouth last month, it tasted really good like "regular" coke i looked at the can and it was called something like "coke light" but was in the same tin as the diet version. I havent seen any more like this , was i dreaming?
Laura it sounds like you had coke light. This is what diet coke is called on the continent. The shop probably buys what is known as euro coke or grey coke. They purchase coke that has been purchased abroad. The reason for this is that as usual we pay over the odds for everything in this country. Euro coke purchased through a uk supplier is normally about 2/3's the price of coke purchased direct from coke in this country. Remember that it is exactly the same product!
Companies like Coca Cola, Cadbury and the like do tailor their products to regional markets. Your Euro-Coke may have tasted better that UK Diet Coke because the formulation was slightly different. This is done to accomodate varying degrees of sweet tooth-ness aroung the world and sometimes for storage purposes - for example Cadbury chocolate in the far east has a far higher melting point to make the product handlable (is that a word?) in warm climates.