National Tea Day: Jimmy Cricket, Miss NI and more well-known NI folk tell us how they like their tea

We debate long and hard about how best to make the perfect cup. Some (wrongly) opt for milk first. Others, quite sensibly add hot water, then wait until they see the hue of their brew before adding the white stuff.

Then there’s the issue of how long a bag should be left in a mug – indeed, whether a bag should even see a mug in the first place, or whether it should be made the old way, with a teapot - stewed on the hob, until it tastes like tar.

And should tea be accompanied by a biscuit (the 1980s McVittie’s TV ad for Rich Tea proclaimed a drink was too wet without one) – and to dip, or not to dip? It’s a minefield.

Tea is so much a part of our culture that in each and everyone of us there lurks a Mrs Doyle. If a guest arrives to our home, they are barely over the threshold before we morph into the tea-foisting housekeeper from Father Ted. "You’ll have a cup of tea " we say. "No, I’m grand, ’’ they might reply. Are you sure?", we insist.... "just a wee drap in your hand?’’Tea is presented as a cure-all for life’s ills. "Nice cup of tea”, people say, whether you’ve just broken a nail, lost your job, or been given a terminal diagnosis. It is there in many a time of crisis, a coddle in a cup. Tea is in our blood. It fortifies and soothes. It wakes us up and calms us down. It puts a smile on our mugs.Here we ask a few well-known Northern Ireland folk about their tea-drinking habits.

Veteran NI comedian Jimmy Cricket describes himself as a “great tea man.”

"I gulp between three and four cupfuls a day. I love tea because I grew up in Belfast with the sound of a boiling kettle ringing in my ears. Friends and neighbours were constantly popping in for a cuppa. What was it the mammy used to say, “Will you have a wee mugful in your hand!".”

Like the majority of people, Jimmy likes to make his brew with a teabag.

“My good lady is more a coffee person, and the solitary teabag fits the brief for just one person. Plus the fact it's less messier. I have two favourite white mugs and my routine is this - the teabag goes in first, then a half spoonful of brown sugar, followed by the hot water and then I finish with the milk. I have two bottles delivered to the doorstep and when they run out we use the supermarket milk.”

Jimmy added: “I think tea without a biscuit is like Morcambe without Wise. With me it's mostly a Digestive biscuit, but they're quickly followed by Ginger Snaps and recently Mrs Cricket brought home a box of Skinny Whips. They're only 80 calories and they are delicious.”

Visit www.jimmycricket.co.uk to find out more about Jimmy and how to get his new autobiography.

Co Tyrone musician Malachi Cush, who was recently appointed as ambassador for the Northern Region of St Vincent de Paul, an international charity dedicated to alleviating poverty, says he could drink tea ‘morning, noon and night’.

"People feel like they haven’t given you a warm welcome if they haven’t offered you a cup of tea.

"I’m a teabag man, because the other is just too much hassle, but I think it’s a generational thing. Years ago there was tea leaves and that’s the way it was. I like hot tea with milk. When I was younger I used to fire in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, but I gave that up a couple of years ago. I think I drink five or six cups of tea a day.

"I have a favourite cup that my nieces and nephews bought me, which says ‘You are (probably) the greatest uncle in the world’. It’s a big cup so you can get plenty in it.”

Malachi admits that he’s a biscuit ‘dunker’."There’s nothing as bad as when half of your biscuit breaks into the tea. But I’d never waste a cup of tea, I’d get the spoon and get the biscuit out and then drink it. A Chocolate Digestive would be the key one for a cup of tea. And as a singer I would drink lemon and ginger tea."

Miss Northern Ireland Kaitlyn Clarke says her ‘love affair’ with tea began with the cup rather than the beverage.

"When I was about 14 I went through a phase of collecting vintage teacups (lots of which my nanny had gifted me!) and somebody pointed out that it was an odd interest given that I never actually drank the stuff. So I started and never looked back. It’s a comfort thing now because anytime life throws something at me, it’s always discussed and usually sorted over a cuppa and a chat with somebody close to me!

“I don’t drink coffee at all – I’m fussy with keeping my teeth as pearly as possible hahah! So I am a straight tea drinker and have at least two cups a day. (As a teacher, usually one goes cold by the time I make it and get round to actually taking a drink in between teacher tasks!).”

And like the others, Kaitlyn also favours teabags over tea leaves.

“I am a teabag drinker for sheer handiness, but love an afternoon tea with flavoured tea leaves! The Hastings group hotels do some of the best afternoon teas I have had! My teacup fixation taught me that it should be milk first as real china can be so delicate that the hot water on it’s own can crack the cup. However, this is a daily debate in our house. In a mug I am milk after.”

And Kaitlyn, who recently returned from the Miss World competition in India, says she also loves a biscuit with her cuppa.

“Any excuse for a little treat. If I’m at work, any chocolate biscuit will do - you can’t beat a good old digestive! At home there’s usually some sort of bun or cake type accompaniment to tea as I love to bake. When I went to India for Miss World, I did order tea and toast each night before bed as a little comfort snack.”

Robin Mercer BEM is managing director of fourth generation garden lifestyle business, Hillmount.

He says: "I find having a cup of tea gives me an opportunity to sit down and relax for a few minutes while I drink it. And if I'm having tea in our cafe (The Gardner’s Rest) at work, I'll choose the same table where I can sit down and indulge in a cup with my wife Edith.”

Robin said the amount of tea he drinks “depends on the day”.

“I would have maybe three or four and always from a teapot. During the week I'll start my day with cereal or toast and a mug of tea at breakfast. Then mid morning I'll enjoy a homemade scone with a cup of tea served in a china cup on a saucer in The Gardener's Rest. I'll also have a cup of tea with a saucer after lunch but unless there's a rep visiting, I'm sitting down for a discussion with a politician or being interviewed by a journalist, I'll usually not have an afternoon cuppa.”

Robin added: “I admit I'm fussy about my tea! Always a teabag and Edith says my tea is like dishwater! I like it weak and I think that water quality attributes to the taste of tea wherever I am in the world. My preference is Nambarrie and we serve it at Hillmount too as I think the flavour is just right.

“I like to put milk in first but when I'm on holiday I really don't like the capsule milk served in hotel rooms. I also really dislike overfilled takeaway cups like you get in airports. There's usually no room for milk and they're always too hot so I end up having to throw half the cup out, adding cold water and milk and then taking the lid off to get a proper drink rather than through the slit in the lid. I might have a biscuit at lunchtime but I tend to just savour the taste of my tea on its own. I used to be a dunker years ago but half the biscuit always seemed to fall in!”