We all know the foundation of the British Empire was built on tea, and I’m partial to a few cups a day myself.

Normally I buy Tetley Tea, but at the supermarket yesterday I opted for a slightly cheaper brand at around £2.50. Then, at the very last moment, I swapped them for the scummiest, cheapest brand of tea bags at a cost of 38 pence.

My thinking was, just as gold is gold, tea is tea. No amount of money is going to change a tea leaf into something else. In fact, the packet even said, “Ingredients: 100% black tea.”

Now some might argue there are different qualities of tea leaves, and perhaps even slightly different varieties. But surely, after the leaf itself has been picked, dried out, crumbled up, shipped halfway across the world, placed into a little bag and then stewed in boiling water, the difference in taste will be negligible?

Around 9 months ago I noticed 3 little black spots on my chin - kind of like blackheads but upon closer inspection they appeared to be thick hairs shaved close to my skin. A couple of months later and they were still there, so I squeezed one, and to my amazement a little black stick slid out!

It was approximately 1cm long and much thicker than a normal hair. It was also fairly hard and solid (i.e. not dirt, skin cells or puss).

Over the next few days I set to work on the other two spots, which proved more difficult to remove. After a lot of squeezing and pressing I managed to get two more of the black sticks to slide from out of my chin - both much the same as the original. I saved one of them on top of a gel pot and dared one of my friends to touch it. But sadly, someone cleaned my bathroom shortly afterwards and I found the stick had been removed from the top of the gel pot.

Now, several months on, I noticed another black spot in the same area. I tried squeezing it, and it just looked like a thick hair so I left it alone. The next day I took a shower and then had a shave. As I passed the razor over my chin I felt a sharp pain, as if the razor had sliced into my skin.

I quickly looked in the mirror, and found it hadn’t cut me at all. Basically, the razor had caught the thick “hair” and plucked it right out. A new black stick was now standing about 1cm out of my face. I tried to remove it, but it appeared to still be wedged in the follicle, so I had to grip it tightly and pull it out.

I did a search on Google for “mutant facial hair” and found someone with a similar experience. In fact, his photo (below) shows one of the little black sticks he removed from his chin, which looks exactly the same as the ones I removed from mine.

I know these are not blackheads, because a blackhead is a blocked follicle whereby the surface of the puss has oxidised and turned black. These black sticks are thick and hard (not pussy or gooey) - just like mutant hairs or several hairs combined into one.