Most English toddlers learn to make themselves look like teapots by putting one hand on their hip and sticking the other out to look like a spout, while singing I'm A Little Teapot.

In Brief Encounter, the romantic film of 1946, several meetings between the couple having an affair (Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard) take place in the tea room of Milford Junction Station over a cuppa. This unglamorous location seems to emphasise the doomed relationship and sets countless stiff upper lips trembling.

Tea For Two (1950) stars Doris Day as wealthy heiress Nanette Carter who bets her uncle $25,000 that she can say "no" to everything for 48 hours. The film is an adaptation of the 1925 Broadway musical No, No Nanette and features the song Tea For Two. This little ditty is a proposal from a young man to his love, declaring they will be happy living in a cottage sipping tea together.

The Beatles song Lovely Rita from the album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is about someone's love for a traffic warden. Among the humdrum lyrics are, "Lovely Rita meter maid, may I enquire discreetly? When are you free to take some tea with me?"

The opening line in Sting's song Englishman In New York is "I don't drink coffee, I take tea, my dear". It is from his 1987 album Nothing Like The Sun and the Englishman in question is the famous eccentric Quentin Crisp, who also appeared in the video.

No episode of EastEnders is complete without somebody putting the kettle on in a crisis.

Singer Boy George famously told TV chat show host Russell Harty that he would prefer to have "a nice cup of tea" to sex.

In 1997 Noel Gallagher of Oasis said that for many young people, taking drugs was like getting up and having a cup of tea.

Tea seems to be the new champagne among models. In 2003, Kate Moss, her then-boyfriend Jefferson Hack and Claudia Schiffer all enjoyed a cuppa as they watched the FrostFrench London Fashion Week show. A specially designed tea bikini was modelled and bags of black tea were given to guests.