(CNN) – You’ll remember the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American revolutionaries famously rubbed the British by throwing tea chests into Boston Harbor.
The new downpour over the correct way of preparing the “cuppa” turned into a similar international incident, in which the ambassadors of Great Britain and the USA are throwing a spoon.
It all started in early May when an American TikTok user named Michelle from North Carolina sparked a rage on social media platforms with her controversial guide to making “hot tea”.
It included a microwave and a dishonorable mixture of milk, lemonade powder, cinnamon, Tang soft drink, industrial quantities of sugar, and one innocent tea bag, which certainly deserved better things in life.
British consumers were proud of their domestic drink, and its leaves were imported mainly from Kenya, India and Malawi. The twin topics in the furious outpouring of comments were “war crime” and “diabetes”.
The fifth TikTok columnist has already garnered more than five million likes for her efforts, but has also sparked righteous anger in a nation that is close to boiling point and with plenty of time on her hands.
So Dame Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States in Washington, called up the military.
Yes, that’s right, in a video released Monday she got boys from the British Army, Navy and Air Force to demonstrate how to make tea in a patriotic and pukka way. There was even a nod to how to run tall tea at high altitude.
Pierce had armed forces behind him, but when Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to the UK, got involved on Wednesday, he created himself as Dirty Harry and came in solo.
His strategy was smart. He set off after a British weakness: coffee. How weak is the UK in continental-style caffeine consumption, how could it go wrong?
The problem with this Clint Eastwood cappuccino is that it makes what looks like an absolutely awful cup of coffee.
It begins a cardinal sin using instant coffee, raising the chopping of any connoisseur faster than hot water dissolves a frozen dry granule.
As people around the world have been increasing their gourmet antiques during the lock, with starters and AeroPress cold beers, there can only be one message for Johnson. Do better.
There has yet to be a video response from Raffaela Trombetta, Italy’s ambassador to the UK since 2018, and Armando Varricchi, Italy’s ambassador to the US for the past four years.
Nor were there any comments on TikTok tea from Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, or Josephat Karanja and Gaitri I. Kumar, respectively, Kenya and the High Commissioner of India to the UK.
Has the time for silence passed?
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