PG Tips, Britain’s most popular tea brand, has pulled a fast one by quietly cutting the amount of tea in its teas.
The reduction has not been matched by a similar trimming of the price. While this may well make commercial sense for PG Tips, some will say it is a dangerous game to mess with our tea. Look what happened when a bunch of stroppy Bostonians boarded an East India Company ship in 1773 and dumped the chests of tea overboard: a revolution followed. That, however, was the exception to the rule.
The teabag itself turned up by accident in around 1908. An American trader began sending out samples in tiny silken bags. The recipients misunderstood, dropped the bag into the pot and started brewing.
Although we now buy almost all our tea leaves in teabags, some believe a “proper” cuppa still involves the loose leaves floating in the pot, unhindered by bags and accompanied by a strainer and a tea cosy.
But it was written in the tea leaves that our laziness would bring about the triumph of the bag. It will be our laziness again that allows PG Tips to make . . . monkeys out of us.