Nicola Davis
speaker
498 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 18 Aug
Nicola Davis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
One day, a few years after drinks journalist Richard Ross had started up his own tea plantation, he found himself in the city and decided to pop into the Balmoral.
He got wind of something fishy.
Having your tea in the Balmoral would be a big deal.
It's iconic, like Claridge's in London or the Plaza in New York.
Afternoon tea is served in the very grand Palm Court restaurant, a table set with pristine white tablecloths and fine china under a large central dome.
By this point, Richard had taken over from Tam as chairman of the Association of Scottish Tea Growers, which renamed itself Tea Scotland.
As you might imagine...
It's a pretty small world and so everyone knows or knows of everyone else.
they were pretty sure they knew who was behind the list.
Tam O'Brien.
The maverick who'd persuaded them to start their plantations, sold them their tea plants and charmed the media into giving glowing coverage to this exciting new industry.
But over the previous year or so, he'd become prickly and elusive, avoiding their calls and emails.
He'd left an Italian grower with a massive unpaid bill, and now it seemed he'd been secretly selling their Scottish tea to Scotland's most famous hotel.
Except the growers knew, whatever tea this was, it wasn't theirs.
So they began to wonder, if this tea was a lie, what about all the tea Tam was selling to other shops and hotels?
After firing off an email to report what they'd discovered at the Balmoral, the tea growers decided to do some further sleuthing of their own.
They wanted to prove that the tea they'd seen on that list didn't come from their plantations.
And that led them, and eventually me, to a small office in an unassuming building a short drive from the centre of the granite city, Aberdeen.
Which is where I met David Burslem, professor of plant sciences at the university.
Softly spoken and friendly, although clearly as sharp as a tack, David led me into one of the lecture rooms beside his lab to chat.
Showing 221–240 of 498 · page 12 of 25
← Previous
Next →