Why are the British so obsessed with tea?

Tradition? Habit?

You’d think we’d invented it, the reputation we have for it, but the Chinese were drinking green tea 5000 years ago whereas we’ve only been drinking it seriously (black tea, in latter years) for about 350 years. Still the British are inextricably linked with it.

I remember seeing on television once, a ghastly woman in a headscarf in a seedy soap opera offering ‘a nice cup of tea’ to someone as though a restorative to all problems. The idea that she might be thought the epitome of British tea drinkers fills me with horror.

Thanks to my elite and expensive education I do know that tea was introduced to Britain by Catherine of Braganza of Portugal who married Charles II, thereby making it fashionable among the upper classes. The English East India Company brought small gifts of tea for the Queen Consort, but it was not considered a commodity worth importing.

As its popularity increased it was sold in male dominated coffee houses and often as a medicinal drink; tea was very expensive. Catherine of Braganza’s taste for tea aided its popularity among women. High prices and taxes led to smuggling and adulterating tea leaves with other substances such as sawdust, sand and other floor sweepings.

Although it was popular among the upper classes the lower classes were able to drink the cheaper, adulterated mixes, but until the price dropped in the middle of the nineteenth century they bought used tea leaves from the bourgeoisie. There are still clear class distinctions in tea drinking: there remains a strong image of afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches among the aspirational as well as a ‘cuppa’ among the lower echelons. Over the last ten years a growing vogue for green tea has emerged among the middle classes.

Nonetheless, as illustrated by the ‘soap opera’ these notions of ‘a nice cup of tea’ being a cure all have become clichés. How does a cup of tea help? I can understand that a large vodka and tonic might go some way to dissipating some of life’s problems, but a cup of tea? I don’t think so.

Tea does have things to commend it though: it’s not full of calories (unless you choose to add them – and that would give me cause to wonder if your palate is so unsophisticated, perhaps you should be drinking fizzy pop instead?) According to recent research, it’s full of anti oxidants which protect our bodies from harmful free radicals, but that’s only if you believe scientists this week. The next lot of research will be different. One minute they are saying it’s terribly healthy, and contributes to our daily minimum liquid intake and the next someone else is saying that because it’s a diuretic it doesn’t count toward those eight glasses of water we should be consuming. Everything in moderation some might suggest. Well, I’ve never been one to promote self control in anything – my motto is ‘if you like it, do it/eat it/drink it, in copious quantities, darling’.

Expats bemoan that Lipton’s Tea is all that’s served in public places abroad and that it’s not a ‘proper’ cup of tea. Indeed I’m told many of you feel the need to bring their tea from the UK. What, really? With all the food shops available here - not to mention the specialist tea shops - you can’t buy something suitable here? Personally, I don’t know what the fuss is about; Lipton’s has always struck me as a delicate tasting tea, but then my drink is coffee. I like it black and bitter (like my tongue, some might say).