Wheeling the tea trolley through the corridors of power.
According to a survey released this month, the office tea break is one of our most missed institutions. The vending machine may be more efficient, but we seem to lament the passing of the tea-break chat. In most offices today the sight of the tea lady wheeling a trolley stacked with tea urn, bone china cups and biscuits is a thing of the past. She was revived by the actress Martine McCutcheon as the perhaps unlikely love interest of a British Prime Minister played by Hugh Grant in the romantic comedy Love Actually. But Liz Pearson's been finding out what it's really like being a tea lady in the corridors of power - where she met one of the House of Commons' longest serving 'tea servers'.. And she also talked to Valerie - or 'mum' as she was known to staff in the Southampton office where she finished her tea lady days nearly twenty years ago..
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