Taking a polite beverage in a traditional English tearoom is a world away from slobbing it in Starbucks. There is an art to it.

You don’t put your elbows on the table. You don’t clang your spoon on the inside of your cup as you stir. You don’t insult the Queen, sip from your teaspoon or handle the sugar cubes. And if you commit either of the cardinal sins of using a mobile phone or dunking your biscuit, you will be invited to leave.

Those rules have been imposed by David Daly in his Brighton teashop. He has said that he is trying to offer his customers the equivalent of high tea at the Ritz. “It is about the art of tea drinking. This is not about going to Starbucks for a mug of coffee. Most people don’t break the rules any more, but one man did bang his head on the table when I walked in, because he was using his phone under the table.”

The rules have prompted a group of surprised customers to set up a discussion group on Facebook, the social networking website. “This is the most scariest place ever,” one customer wrote. “The list is long and intense, but worst of all you can’t dunk biscuits.” She claimed to have seen people ejected for daring to wet their digestives. Another wrote: “It’s quite funny and it’s really cute in there. The guy told me off for my spoon being in the tea cup, and then winked at me.”

However, Mr Daly, 30, is behind the times in trying to emulate the Ritz. The Tea Council, which represents the British tea trade, has this year named the rival Dorchester as the top London afternoon tea venue, while nominating Peacock’s in Ely, Cambridgeshire, as the best tearoom in the country.

The Tea Council does not offer advice on etiquette, an area of arcane expertise that is more alive in the US these days than in Britain, which after Ireland is the world’s largest per capita tea-drinking nation.

American experts advise that one does not “take” tea; that being a vulgar expression of the lower classes. One “drinks” tea. The spout of the teapot should always face the hostess, or appointed pourer, and the cup should be placed back on the saucer between sips, never waved in the air.

“Do not stir your tea in clanging circular motions,” one US etiquette website counsels. “Softly fold the liquid from the six o’clock position to the 12 o’clock two or three times, being careful not to clang your spoon on the inside of the cup.”

Do not blow on your tea, do not loop your fingers through the handle, and under no circumstances grip the cup with the palm of your hand.

Mr Daly would agree with all of that, but there is a divergence of opinion over the position of the little finger. He disapproves of raising it while the cup is brought to the lips, but the American view is that it is acceptable to continue a tradition born of the need for balance in the days before tea cups had handles.

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