SOME chaps like girls with curves, others prefer them slim and elegant and a percentage will place intellect high on their list of preferences. If she also has a dad who owns a brewery that is counted as a bonus.

It’s the same with girls. They can be attracted to chaps with muscled torsos or ones with a public school education. Alternatively a fat lad with a sense of humour and the ugly bloke with a fat wallet and a Lamborghini can equally appeal.

The point is that perfection is subjective. It is in the eye of the beholder.

Which is why I wonder how it took researchers at the Northumbria University’s School of Life Sciences 180 hours to come up with an equation for the perfect cup of tea.

A team of scientists took more than a month – allowing for eight-hour days and weekends off – to come up with an answer that doesn’t hold water.

And why did they bother in the first place?

The reason the hard working folk at that particular Northumbrian college undertook this ground breaking study was because Cravendale Milk paid them to.

Their research now takes its rightful place in the Department of Useless Information (Breakfast Etiquette section) alongside the discovery that toast has a 62% chance of falling butterside down.

This was the work of a scientist at Aston University who got 1,000 children to conduct 21,000 toast drops on his behalf.

What is wrong with British science? Are there no diseases to cure? No fiscal challenges to solve? What will Northumbria University be concentrating on next week? The falling down ratio of Newcastle Brown consumption?

So what did they come up with for the perfect cuppa?

Add boiling water to a tea bag. Leave for two minutes and remove bag. Add milk and leave for six minutes before drinking.

During the investigation, volunteers drank 285 cups of tea in laboratory conditions. This is all deemed important because Britons drink 165 million cups of tea per day. I’m on my fourth cup as we speak. Cravendale’s interest is because 98% take milk in their tea.

Well I don’t, so this perfect recipe is not perfect for me and I suspect it won’t be for millions of other tea drinkers. There will be those who warm the pot. Those who put the milk in first. Those who like Earl Grey or tea with lemon.

I make my tea by multi-dipping a tea bag in a cup of boiling water. Then I discard the bag and start drinking the tea as soon as I am able without the possibility of acquiring third degree burns.

When my mate Kev the Sparky Andrews stayed with us, he watched me perform this ritual. The next time he made a brew (he’s milk and half a sugar), he handed me a cup of tea that was perfect for my palette.

“Sixteen dips,” he said. “I counted when you made it.”

I hadn’t even counted myself but did so next time and he was right. Sixteen dips for perfection. Kev sussed it after one observation that took 10 seconds. Scientists took a month. And got it wrong.

Kev is now available for other research projects. Beer tasting and making ladies laugh are his specialities.

Contact me at the usual address. I’m on 10% commission.