From our love of queueing to apologising for everything, this country has a long history of confusing foreigners with its quirky traditions.
But a fresh craze relating to our tea-drinking habit has really taken the biscuit – with Britons piling in to compound the misery of utterly bamboozled Americans.
A viral social media trend shows British TikTok users dropping everything to make a cuppa due to a so-called ‘tea time alarm’.
Designed to playfully tease US-based onlookers, the make-believe alert reminds the British public to drink tea each day.
The joke has even been picked up by the Government’s TikTok account, in a clip showing a national ‘tea alarm button’ that garnered almost 800,000 views.
One hapless American woman named Brandy came across the popular leg-pull and posed several questions in her own TikTok video.
One baffled inquiry was: ‘When the tea time alarm goes off, if you’re in the bathroom or you’re walking around on the street, what do you do?
‘Do you go to a friend’s house? Do you go to a cafe? Do you keep some in your backpack?’
A British account led her further astray in response, claiming: ‘When the tea alarm goes off you just go into the nearest home, shop, building and they will be making tea and you’ll be given a cup.
‘It’s illegal for them to turn you away, they will be prosecuted.’
Rochelle Raye Anthony, runner-up on The Apprentice in 2023, in a separate post added: ‘I keep seeing Americans asking whether this tea time alarm thing is real or not real. Have you never travelled outside of America?’
This Morning hosts Cat Deeley, 48, and Ben Shephard, 50, joined in the fun as the pair filmed a sketch for the ITV show where they were almost caught out by the alert.
And firefighters at South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue unboxed a device which they joked wirelessly connects to the ‘tea alarm tower, amplifying the national alarm and giving you those vital extra seconds’ to make a cup of tea.
Meanwhile, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) shared a video of a rescue team returning to shore, with a caption saying: ‘In 201 years of the RNLI we’ve never missed a tea alarm.’
Heinz Beans, another national favourite, cheekily asked on X: ‘Anyone fancy a custard beanz for the tea time alarm today?’
The trend has inspired TikTok users to create fake accounts called the TVLA or TeaVLA – a pun on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency – warning the public to obey the tea time alarm to avoid being fined.
Others have shared extreme ways the alarm has forced them to drink tea, including a duo who rushed to make a cuppa before ziplining over the Eden Project in Cornwall.
In a video posted by nearby Hangloose Adventure on its TikTok account, Karis Lawer, 25, pours tea from a thermal flask into two mugs before pushing her colleague, Martin Kelly, 24, down the zipline while holding the drink after the national alarm went off during a test flight.
Mr Kelly, operations manager at the adventure camp, suggested the national tea time alert was ingrained in the country’s psyche.
He said: ‘It’s normal for every British person to have at least three cups a day, so I think the siren goes off without us noticing half the time.’
Ms Lawer, the site’s duty manager, added: ‘Tea is already something we have daily, so to make a video pretending that there’s an alarm that goes off in order for us to have tea is such an easy thing to do. It’s so effective.’
The duo advised: ‘Do not be afraid to drink tea anywhere.’
