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.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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The sound design was by Joel Cox.

And the executive producer was Ellie Buey.

It's 2014 and a new venture in Scotland is starting to generate a buzz.

Explaining his audacious entry into the world of tea growing to BBC presenter Mark Stephen is Tam O'Brien.

Back then, I wasn't long into my career as a science journalist.

And it would be a few months until I met Tam myself for a feature I was writing.

And in the decades since, there's been a question tucked away at the back of my mind.

Something that I just couldn't figure out.

Until now.

And over the next three episodes, that's the story you're going to be hearing.

I'm Nicola Davis, science correspondent at The Guardian.

This is a special miniseries from Science Weekly, a Scottish tea mystery.

Let there be no doubt, journalists love a quirky story.

And for a British journalist like me, what's better than a quirky story about tea?

Which is why, in 2015, I ended up in one of London's fanciest hotels, the Dorchester.

By the time we met, Tam O'Brien had already been making waves with his new venture.

He was everywhere, on TV, radio, even social media, telling anyone he could about his wee tea plantation on the Dalryock Estate in Perthshire.

I sat down with Tam, together with the director of food and beverage at the Dorchester.

Tam was supplying them with his Scottish-grown teas and had even helped set up a rooftop tea garden.

He was a fascinating character, very dapper, with twinkling eyes and the total self-assuredness of an entrepreneur.

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