Media
In the past they were often used as stereotypical figures in British comedy, with a tea lady usually portrayed as a harassed, overweight, middle aged woman in a uniform and cap, or as a very pretty recipient of all sorts of lewd comments from the workforce, as in the Carry on film Carry on at your Convenience.
The character Mrs Doyle in the 1990s British sitcom Father Ted, set in Ireland, had the role of a tea lady, and became known for relentlessly forcing the other characters to drink the tea she'd made for them, possibly a reference to the fact that the Irish are the biggest tea drinkers in the world averaging 4 to 6 cups per person per day. Tea ladies in general were a frequent target of illusory "cuts" and "economies" in Yes Minister, frequently conjured up by Nigel Hawthorne's character Sir Humphrey Appleby. However, tea ladies were never once seen onscreen for the whole five-series run of the show.
In association football, media and fans often blame "the tea lady" for leaking information about player transfers to the public, regardless of whether or not team managers actually have a tea lady.
Read more about this topic: Tea Lady
Famous quotes containing the word media:
“The media no longer ask those who know something ... to share that knowledge with the public. Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimate it.”
—Serge Daney (1944–1992)
“Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why—but the editorialists forget it—terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)