Let’s all keep calm and have a cuppa
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FOR A FEW weeks in 2008, I perked up every time I heard Duffy’s hit single Mercy. In the way that you do when you really like a pop song, the sort that gets you on the dance floor or makes you jig around the kitchen. It was played all the time and for a while the pretty blonde Welsh girl was Britain’s most popular solo female singer.
Then she disappeared – pressures of fame or something – and I hadn’t really thought about her until last week’s extraordinary story came out about how she had been drugged, raped and held captive and had been unable to talk about it. Well, I hope she is OK now and feels able at last to bring us more delightful music. Best of luck to her.
WHAT was going on in Rishi Sunak’s head when he posted a smiling picture of himself on Twitter with a jumbo-sized packet (1,040 tea bags) of Yorkshire Tea? “Quick Budget prep break making tea for the team. Nothing like a good Yorkshire brew,” he said.
We don’t know much about the shiny new Chancellor yet but from this calculated missive we can see he’s presenting himself as an ordinary bloke who isn’t above getting the teas in.
And in a shameless appeal to all those plain-speaking northerners who unexpectedly gave their vote to the Conservatives in the last election it is honest, plain straightforward Yorkshire tea. It’s builders’ tea, not some pretentious strawberry and kiwi fruit infusion or a lime-flower tisane which your out-oftouch metropolitan wussies would favour.
The man-with-tea picture is intended to make you overlook that Rishi was head boy at Winchester, got a First at Oxford, was a Fulbright scholar, and worked as an analyst for finance giants Goldman Sachs: all details which are best forgotten when you’re trying to ingratiate yourself with the great unwashed.
But didn’t any of the “team” want coffee? Maybe that wasn’t allowed because saying: “Cheers Rishi mate, I’ll have a decaf, soy latte with an extra shot in my recyclable cup” would have been far too Westminster bubble for this man of the people.
In the past my guess is that a Budget meeting would have been lubricated with stiff gin and tonics all round at regular intervals. But if Mr Sunak had been pictured with a litre-sized bottle of Gordon’s and an ice bucket he’d be in even more trouble than he is now. If that were possible. Because for some reason (which should not surprise anyone in the polarised times in which we live) the Chancellor’s frankly cynical attempt to show how ordinary he is has backfired terribly.
Some frothing working-class keyboard hero on Twitter announced: “Yorkshire Tea now on boycott list. ANY product featured by ANY member of this vile Boris Johnson government will be treated the same.”
Poor old Yorkshire Tea – which was not party to the Chancellor’s selfie plus teabags – was left to field a barrage of calls from the incensed mob. It replied: “We’ve spent the last three days answering furious accusations and boycott calls. For some, our tea just being drunk by someone they don’t like means it’s for ever tainted, and they’ve made sure we know it.”
But my bet is that with sales of tea going down year on year, this brouhaha (brew-haha?) could boost Yorkshire’s profits marvellously. It’s publicity that money just can’t buy.
And thank heavens, the British sense of humour is not entirely dead, with PG Tips sending a message of solidarity to its beleaguered rival: “Just wanted you to know that I’m here for you. Message me if you wanna cuppa.”
What a storm in a tea cup.