Some talk of Earl Grey and some of builder’s tea. But whatever your brew, the report that we publish today suggests that a nice cuppa tea is cheaper than it has been for generations. Thirty years ago, the average weekly wage would have bought 6,870 teabags at 1p each. Today the average weekly wage would buy 29,800 teabags at a halfpenny each. You would need to be a binge teapothead to spend all your wages on tea. And serious tea drinkers look down their spouts at teabags, which contain the “fannings” or dusty grot left after grading the finer leaves.

Overproduction and a price war have brought down the cost of the leaf, although that benefit is balanced by the increasing wholesale price of milk – so make our brew black with one, please. Coffee is the American drink. Wine is the French drink. But tea runs through our nursery rhymes and proverbs. It is a classless drink for royalty as well as the working man. Builder’s tea, strong, with milk and spoonfuls of sugar, is a native heresy exported to India and other parts of the old Empire. But who else would want to dilute the delicate oriental leaf with cow juice? The attraction of tea is the same as that of cricket. Its production and performance are rich with rules. Whether to pour the milk in first is a class shibboleth. Some say that scalding tea-in-first cracked the earthenware mugs of the workers, but not the china of the gentry. And samovars and tea ceremonies suggest that tea is not an exclusively English drink. But tea has never caused storms, like alcopops and vodka, unless you count the Boston Tea Party. So now is a cheap teacup of opportunity to revive what the British used to regard as the national drink.