Fear and loathing in the kitchen

When you turn up for your first day of a Media Studies degree, full of youthful ambition and dreams of being the British Scorsese, you no doubt get a talk about your possible future in the media. You hear how competitive it is, and all about needing to be multi-skilled. How being confident shooting, editing and getting release forms signed while standing upside down in a street in Baghdad is a good skill set to acquire. Another highly useful skill that you will defiantly need when saying goodbye to academia and entering the real cut and thrust of the media marketplace, is how to make a cup of tea. Milk and two fucking sugars.

After years of studying and honing my technique, I know how to 'give good tea'. It is truly amazing how many people don’t, such as the work experience girl we had in recently who had never made a cup in her life. Having a butler to take care of such duties for her why should she. I’m surprised Jeeves didn’t come to work with her so whatever meaningless task was assigned she could simply pass on to the ‘help’ while she flicks her hair over into a big bouffant and twiddles the tassels on her desert storm scarf. I actually remember some god awful programme on the tv a few years back starring Paul Burrell (one of the major beneficiaries of undeserved fame from reality television, along with celebrity cheat Charles Ingram) teaching thick Australian 'princesses' how to make a cup of tea. Never put the milk in first, or you'll find yourself locked up in the tower of London by the order of her majesty, with your skull pecked by ravens (apparently only 'common' people do this).

Making a lot of tea, you do start to wonder how people can get so anal about the beverage. A friend who works at the offices of a commercials production company says that in their kitchen next to the kettle, with no irony, is a pantone chart showing the exact shade that each powermonger in the company likes their tea. A pantone chart! Now most people don’t like it too weak or strong (light terracotta myself) but a fucking pantone chart for the love of god, do these people maybe take themselves a bit too seriously? Next to one of the darker shades is written BUILDERS, the pretentious tossers term for the working class cuppa. Well a bricky would never drink a a ginseng and essence of cucumber would they! Or demand Molten Brown in the toilets to moisturise their delicate hands after taking a dump! My friend says BUILDERS is rarely ordered and if so always on a confidential basis - the ‘creative’ wanting to keep their working class tea drinking habit secret from other members of staff (and not be labelled 'that pikey in the smoke suite').

Its good advice for the powerful to be polite to their runner, because just as we have all heard stories of someone being obnoxious to restaurant staff and having their food spat on in the kitchen, just the same happens in facilities houses. One lump or two indeed. A runner acquaintance of mine, a rather filthy character who I would not let near any food or drink I was going to consume (think of the kid with the dust cloud that follows him around in Charlie Brown), often boasts of how he has taken to storing tea bags up his arse crack which he pulls out for the more obnoxious members of staff and visiting commissioners. I’m sure the boiling water takes care of the scabies and stuff but still it can’t be very healthy. So a word of warning, watch how demeaning you are next time you order your drinks from some young lackey, or you might get a cup of arse tea that will certainly be a distinct shade of brown. Match that to your fucking Pantone chart.