h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Of course the water must be freshly boiled, NOT re-boiled. I remember my Grandfather (who worked for the Mazawatee Tea Co.) insisting on this. He would turn in his grave at the sight of American attempts to make tea!!

Quite right - surely you remember the Julie Walters Ty-Phoo adds:
"Always use freshly drawn water"
"Everybody knows that one"

My fiancee thinks I'm mad because I always empty the kettle first - but it's essential: boiling and cooling causes dissolved gases to escape from the water (according to the second law of thermodynamics - the entropy is thus increased). This leaves your tea (no pun intended) tasting stale.

And why is it that airlines give you the milk before your first cup of tea, so you can correctly follow DNA's sequence - but for your second cup (and if you're heading home from America you'll have been without good tea for days or weeks, so you'll need two cups) they bring the milk AFTERWARDS?

Oh, and it's very important to keeps the bags in an airtight environment too - anyone who opens the box and just dumps it in the cupboard has two days, at the outside, of really top-class tea.

I have found that Tea tastes much better in areas with hard water (although it does look a bit scummy), in areas where the water is soft it tends to be weak and whimpish.
I'm not an Earl-Grey man myself I prefer Assam or Darjeeling, no milk, definitely no sugar, no ice, no lemon, and luke warm. But it must have been made with boiling water.

The thing I am amazed about, and really had to comment on is that the instructions given are wrong in one small respect. Warming the pot with boiling water and then reheating the kettle gets rid of the air in the water so the tea does not taste as nice. Ideally the pot must be heated while the kettle is coming to the boil.