Dai Henwood, comedian, telly host - and total tea fan.
My happy place is sitting in the backyard doing my own take on a Japanese/Chinese tea ceremony. I'm a tea enthusiast and connoisseur and it's my meditative place to be. I try to do it once a day, in the early morning sun if I can, for about 30 minutes. If I'm not in my happy place when I sit down, it puts me in my happy place. It's such a juxtaposition from doing comedy, and it feeds the quieter part of my personality.
I drink a tea called Pu-erh. It's a fermented tea from China that can be up to 50 years old, and it comes in a cake form. You have to rinse it out and brew it a couple of times. You can brew it up to seven times, and it becomes quite a ceremony. It's not something that can be judged in a scientific way - it's not this-many-leaves-for-this-many-minutes. It's something that should be brewed slowly and you have to take time over. It's incredibly peaceful and I like the smell of it and I love the accoutrements that go with it.
When I first tried drinking tea I was 15 and doing School Certificate, and I read somewhere that it was very good for your brain. So I drank heaps of green tea one day and got really sick. It ruined three days of study. I didn't really enjoy the taste but I was at the age that I forced myself to enjoy it. It was the same with punk music. I didn't like that at first either, but because my friends were into it ...
Growing up I was always the class clown, but I definitely had this other side of me that was more peaceful. I've always been fascinated by Buddhism and Taoism. I studied drama and Eastern religion at university. I discovered Pu-erh when my father was performing The Phantom of the Opera in Japan. I'd stay with him, and perform at the Tokyo Comedy Festival, and investigate eastern religion and meditation.
