What’s for dinner tonight? (Or do you call it tea?)

Forget ‘Laurel or Yanny’, the question that’s long divided offices and homes is ‘dinner or tea’? And who’s right?

New YouGov analysis among more than 42,000 English people reveals that across England as a whole, the majority (57 per cent) call it ‘dinner’, while just over a third (36 per cent) opt for ‘tea’.

The remainder either call it something else (including five per cent who say ‘supper) or answered ‘don’t know’.

Unsurprisingly, the data shows there are clear geographical differences. Breaking down the results by county reveals a stark North/South divide, with ‘dinner’ the winner in the South and ‘tea’ being top in the North.

‘Dinner’ is most entrenched in the Home Counties, with the residents of East Sussex, Essex and Kent being the most likely to favour it. By contrast, those in Greater Manchester, Tyne and Wear and Merseyside are most likely to say ‘tea’.

The contest is tightest in the Midlands, with people in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Herefordshire and Shropshire being marginally more likely (0-10 percentage points) to favour tea, while dinner is the marginally more popular term in Worcestershire (as well as Bristol further to the south).

While some have suggested that the dinner/tea debate is driven by class, YouGov data reveals this isn’t the case. While middle class Northerners are nine percentage points more likely to say ‘dinner’ rather than ‘tea’ when compared with their working class counterparts (37 per cent vs 28 per cent), ‘tea’ is still chosen by the majority of people in both classes (58 per cent among middle class and 67 per cent among working class Northerners).

Among Southerners there is barely a class difference at all. Only three to four percentage points separate the two groups, with 74 per cent of middle class and 70 per cent of working class Southerners opting for ‘dinner’.