1. Research conducted by the Tea Council identified six different workplace tea-drinking postures: the gossip, the nervy one, the weak boss, the confident one, the angry one and the listener.

2. During the second world war, the Navy worked its way through 4,000 tonnes of tea. Per day.

3. The most famous tea clipper, The Cutty Sark, actually carried tea only eight times.

4. In the most famous tea party in literature, the one given by the Hatter and the March Hare in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, no one actually drinks a cup of tea!

5. Winning captains in the tea clipper races or "Tea Derbies" received a whopping £100 bonus.

6. A 1758 pamphlet declared tea drinking to be "very hurtful to those who work hard and live low", condemning it as "one of the worst of habits, rendering you lost to yourselves".

7. The phrase "storm in a teacup" has its origins in a Latin expression, "excitare fluctus in simpulo", which means "raise a tempest in a ladle".

8. Victorian tea trays were often painted with low-quality lacquered paintings and the derogatory term "teaboardy" meant the same as the modern-day "chocolate-box", to describe pictures of little artistic merit.

9. Mountaineers on Everest can't make a decent brew: the reduced atmospheric pressure at high altitude lowers the boiling point of water to 60-70ºC.

10. In the 18th century, a chamber pot was often referred to as a "tea voider".