THIS week we are mourning the official demise of one of Britain's great institutions: the traditional cup of tea.

For decades, probably centuries, our ancestors have performed a quintessentially English ritual: loose tea in pot, pour on boiling water, pour out of pot, add a little fresh milk from the doorstep, sprinkle sugar to taste.

So much part of our culture is this routine, that the greatest debate of all time is not whether we should be in or out of the euro, but whether the milk should be added to the cup before or after the tea.

But this week, because we buy so little loose tea, it has been dropped from the Retail Price Index - the list of everyday prices that are monitored to work out the rate of inflation.

Also dropped is bottled milk, because instead of buying pintas, people prefer to lug home litre cartons from the supermarket.

And so the face of Britain changes.

Loose tea has been on the RPI since 1916, but its death has been a long time coming. Loose tea never really recovered from the strain of the introduction of muslin teabags in 1935, although it was 30 years before the perforated paper ones stole its place in the nation's caddies.

We still make 6.6 million cups of tea a day in this country, but 93 per cent are made by teabags. And now the only debate we can have is whether it is socially acceptable to squeeze out a teabag using your fingers - especially if you are making a cuppa for someone else.

A LAUDABLE £2m advertising campaign has been launched to remind the North-East that it is a thriving place. The campaign's two-word catchline (above) is "Here. Now." Only the wantonly mischievous would turn it around into a single word (below).

WHO says that higher education is underfunded? In the past few days alone, universities have been thrilling us with their massive intellectual breakthroughs that are going to change the course of human life as we know it.

Central Lancaster University has discovered that ball number 13 is the unluckiest on the National Lottery; Northumbria University has worked out that footballers play better at home because high testosterone levels force men to defend their own territory; York University worked out that Southampton football fans are the most tuneful on the terraces; Southampton University worked out that bullying bosses are not popular in the workplace; Northumbria, again, worked out that half a pint of lager improves the memory of students and, a day earlier, it had worked out that chewing gum also improves the memory.

All undoubtedly valuable contributions to improving the human condition, but a cure for cancer wouldn't go amiss.

AND... if chewing gum really does help people remember, why do chewers always forget to put the chewed gum in the bin?