Paper Monitor: Jam or cream first?
It's not quite Brighton Beach Mammoirs.
But a sunseeker clad in a woolly bikini basking on a Teeside beach takes the traditional post-sunny bank holiday slot in Tuesday's Metro. (Paper Monitor has previously catalogued Fleet St's tendency to document the doings of young women in bikinis on such days. See here and here and here and here.)
She's not 20-something. And she's not even human-sized. She is part of a knitted tableaux that's appeared on the front in Saltburn-by-Sea.
The Daily Mail leaves the weather well enough alone and instead tackles one of the most pressing questions of our age. Jam first, or cream first?
Dr Eugenia Cheng, a maths boffin from Sheffield University has devised a statistical formula for the perfect cream tea.
The best weight ratio is 2:1:1 - for example, a 70g scone topped with 35g jam and 35g cream - and the ideal thickness of the whole not exceeding 2.8cm. There's even a detailed info graphic, perhaps to cut out and keep.
And the answer to that VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION?
"The Devon tradition is to slather the scone with cream first, while the Cornish - who also lay claim to inventing cream teas - prepare their scones the opposite way," notes the Mail.
SO WHICH FIRST?
"Dr Cheng's formula is a victory for Cornwall, with jam spread first to avoid it running off the edge."
And use clotted rather than whipped cream.
Phew. So that's settled.
This ruling may have to be taken under advisement.
Turns out a Cornish clotted cream company funded the study.