Will’s Word on Warwick: A sit down with the student behind the Warwick Tea

Since October 2024, the Warwick Tea has captured the hearts, minds, and attention of the student body, entertaining us with gossip, Warwick news, and campus competitions. In under two years, it has amassed a following of over 9,000 students and posted over 11,000 submissions, becoming a central part of Warwick life.

But who’s pulling the strings behind this infamous account? With rumours circling, suspicions flying, and fears that the Tea would follow its predecessors into oblivion, I tracked down the admin behind the Warwick Tea to lift the lid on this iconic Warwick account.

Join me for this exclusive sit down as I spill the tea, ask the tough questions, and find out more about the most mysterious student on campus. Featuring revelations of multiple accounts, question marks over the page’s future, and the vindication of W-WOW’s boldest theory. This is an interview you won’t want to miss.

In the spirit of Warwick Tea’s commitment to anonymity, I have kept the founder completely anonymous, thoroughly burning the original recording of our interview.

Will: Why did you decide to start the account?

The Warwick Tea’s founder: My flatmates and I were talking one night, partly about how my exec role was quite dull and how I wanted to do something fun and creative. Anyway, someone jokingly mentioned I should start the next Warwick Grapevine, seeing as how I’d been a fan of the Grapevine and also Warwick Love before that. Anyway, I thought, why not? I always appreciated them, and I think I was secretly a little bit envious of the admin, because it looked fun to run – although I’d never admit that at the time.

W: How many of you were there on the admin team?

T: It was just me.

Although my friends and partner were a huge help, often reading through posts. They’ve been really supportive in helping me with the account. However, I was making all the posts, which took a bit of time, but it never got in the way of my social life.

This revelation was a huge surprise. Considering the Grapevine’s admin had up to 10 people at its peak, I don’t think many people thought it likely that the Tea would be run by a single person.

W: How did you deal with welfare complaints?

T: This is something I’m quite proud of… from November 2024 to December 2025, we didn’t get any serious complaints. And while we’ve had a few in the last six months, we always made sure to remove the slide if someone complained, and it’s never escalated beyond that.

W: To have over a year with no complaints is very surprising for a gossip page.

T: Definitely. And for the ones we did get earlier on, I’d just message back and say fair enough, we’ll make sure to censor any similar stuff in the future. There was never any malicious intent. I’m sure some people have complaints and haven’t messaged us, but still, I think it’s been good, especially, as you said, for a university gossip account.

And there’s always going to be stuff that we could have censored better at times, especially at the beginning… I say ‘we’ because many submissions were often deliberated on by my flat as a group, especially early on.

If someone messaged us with a complaint, I’d reply as soon as I saw it. Usually, I’d just say, we won’t post stuff with your initials again and that seemed to work as a compromise. We were kind of figuring it out as we went along. But welfare complaints were always taken seriously.

W: What would you say have been some of the highlights of the Warwick Tea so far?

T: Well, Term One of this year was fantastic. We were getting over a million views a month, which was really cool. But ultimately, I would have to say the first Biggest Big Name On Campus competition was the most fun.

The Warwick Tea’s Biggest Big Name On Campus competitions were contests in which students voted to determine which student was the biggest ‘name’ at the university. The competition ran in both 2025 and 2026.

Although going through all the nominations was painful, it took hours and hours, especially since there were around 700 both times.

W: 700? And you went through them all?

T: Yeah, it was a nightmare. Took me hours. But it was worth it; that whole competition was really great to run, and it was a cool way to bring the campus together over ‘BNOCs’ of all things. This year was a bit less fun just since the novelty had worn off, though the winner being the only one who didn’t ‘campaign’ was great to see… felt like an anti-vote against ‘BNOCs’ which I think is very fair.

W: Have you ever been accused of being the Tea?

T: I know that my flatmate’s been accused quite a lot, which we always find funny. I do think that at university everyone is in their own clusters, but in reality, the university is a lot bigger than that, so people often think it’s someone they know.

W: What about any other Warwick accounts? Did you have much communication with them?

T: I was waiting for you to ask me this. I remember you reached out to us for comment back in December last year for your article on the Tea and the Coffee having the same admin, and you caused a bit of a stir in my flat, because you were bang on.

And I’m revealing this now, a bit hesitantly, but it was my flatmate’s idea. He was like: Why don’t you do an opposite number, similar to Warwick Olive Branch, which you could control.

For the first time in the history of W-WOW, I appear to have called it correctly. For context, all the way back in December 2024, I wrote a needle-pushing article for this very column alleging that the Warwick Tea and the Warwick Coffee were run by the same puppeteering admin team, who created both fronts to ensure monopoly over online submission culture at Warwick. This revelation was followed by much celebration, smug gloating, and general disbelief, which has been cut for the benefit of the reader.

W: So, you run both the Coffee and the Tea, is what you’re saying?

T: Well, it’s a bit complicated, but yes.

W: So, do you still run the Warwick Coffee, because as far as I’ve seen, it looks to have gone dormant, right?

T: Yeah, it was like, we had a lot of fun, and we were making it bad on purpose, posting anything and everything people submitted. And then I got a bit bored with it and handed it over to my partner to run, which she did for a bit. We thought it was pretty funny that the Warwick Tea and the Warwick Coffee were dating each other.

W: Would you say you went under the radar during your time as an undergrad?

T: I was definitely out and about…

W: So, you weren’t hiding in the library the whole time?

T: No, I’d go to POP! most weeks and Circle… I had to be careful having it on my phone. Circles were quite stressful; the fear of getting phone-in-circled was a big worry since I always forgot to sign out… normally, I would have to turn my phone off before Circle started.

W: Of course, that would have been pretty bad, I imagine.

T: Exactly. I was very involved with one club, I won’t name which, but I was always conscious of phone-in-circle. I knew the social secs well, so I like to think that they wouldn’t rat me out. However, it would open up a bunch of doors to conversations that I’d rather not have, especially since the club has had things said against it on the Tea.

I was around, but wasn’t a huge personality on campus; I wasn’t a BNOC. Although we did joke as a flat that we could rig the BNOC Competition to be just us and make our flatmate who doesn’t exist the winner.

W: What’s happening with the Tea next year?

T: Well, I’m graduating, so I’ll obviously stop running the page myself. I think it could be too risky or it could go downhill if I try a handover. So, I’m thinking I’ll retire it and let another account succeed the Tea, just like we did with the Grapevine. I would just want to make sure that it’s being censored well since it’s definitely difficult to censor that much, and I feel like I’ve become quite attuned to it. Then again, it’s also possible I’ll get tempted by the idea of passing it on and change my mind. Honestly, I am quite torn.

W: Have you had any contact with the Grapevine?

T: We haven’t. They released the handover video, which was fantastic for us; it was very funny, and it gained us about a thousand followers, which we really appreciated. I should definitely drop them a DM, maybe not with my personal Instagram, though.

W: Did the novelty wear off in terms of posting?

T: Third term of last year was difficult to keep on top of. There were so many submissions… people were getting more and more into the Tea. And, at times, you’re thinking: Why am I spending time on this? I should be… not failing. But it was fun. And, otherwise, I’d have just been doomscrolling through TikTok.

W: And so why are you taking a step back from the account?

T: Basically, because I’m graduating and doing it for two years, it does get a bit tiring. I was thinking about ending it last year, but I couldn’t help myself from doing another year.

W: Overall, do you think the Tea has a positive or negative impact on the Warwick community?

T: I think definitely more positive. We tell it how it is, bring the campus together, and try to put out some funny stuff along the way.

I think the Grapevine was a good thing, but I think they let more things go out. We were luckier. We didn’t see as many political arguments for one thing.

But still, I like to think that I’ve done a good job of censoring any problematic submissions. And, it isn’t easy, because there have been over 11,000, and I’m only one guy.

W: Were there any other highlights of running the account?

T: There was the Varsity post. We had the idea of it when Louis Gosling and the Sports VP from Coventry were doing their Varsity competition, where it was Coventry versus Warwick. We thought it would be funny to do a Warwick-Coventry gossip account collab, mimicking the original varsity posts.

Unfortunately, Coventry Scenes was terrible. So, we decided to get around that by creating our own Coventry account called Covfessions, which we’re very proud of.

W: Wait, so you ran Warwick Tea, Warwick Coffee, and a Coventry gossip account?

T: Yes, it was those three. It was a bit much, but fun. With Covfessions, we made the logo, and then we put out loads of Coventry memes, which was quite difficult because we don’t know very much about Coventry University. Then we published people’s confessions, all to make it look like a proper Coventry account, which it was… for a bit. We probably put 50 out, all real.

We got to about 500 followers and did the joint post with the Tea account, and no one seemed to notice. The goal was to get some Coventry students interested in the Tea.

W: Did it work?

T: Not at all; we didn’t really gain any followers from it, but it was quite fun, and no one seemed to spot what we’d done, but then who would have thought?

W: Do you still run the account now?

T: No. After Varsity, I gave it to my friend to run, and he ran it for about a month as a cover until he got bored.

The best thing of all was that Coventry Scenes, which had initially looked terrible, all of a sudden decided to rebrand to Covfess… they came up with a new, very similar – but way more boring – logo, and then blocked us. Another win for Warwick over Coventry, I guess.

W: Overall, how do you feel about creating such a successful Warwick account?

T: It’s been a lot of fun.

My goal has always been to have some fun and cause some intrigue. A bit like Twitter, but before Elon Musk bought it. And I think the Tea is unique, because you look at other gossip accounts across the country, and they’re just individual submissions for each post and a lot fewer posts. You don’t get that community there, and you don’t bring people on campus together.

W: Do you ever feel as though you have a broader insight into the student body than most people?

T: You do get a lot of information, and you get more than people see in the posts. That’s because for serious submissions, we would always say that people should go to Report and Support, or the police, or the university. After all, we’re not the avenue for that… because it’s anonymous… none of these claims should be viewed as having evidence, because there’s no accountability, and I don’t think that should be the point of it.

W: Finally, is there anything you’re going to miss now that you’re stepping back?

T: The best thing about running it was people talking about it all the time, and you knowing that you run it and you started it. I’m definitely going to miss that next year.

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In under two years, the Tea has grown from the side project of a bored student to a bona fide Warwick institution, with thousands of followers and submissions alike. As the founder graduates, the question of the Tea’s succession remains unanswered. Whether it passes to a new admin or gives way to another page, the future of Warwick’s long-running gossip tradition and the Tea’s place in it is unclear. Either way, however, its success these last two years has already cemented it firmly into the halls of Warwick iconography.

And who would have guessed that the same student was behind the Warwick Coffee – and even a Coventry gossip page too. Although perhaps that kind of nonconformity is precisely what we’ve come to expect from the Warwick Tea and its admin.

While these accounts can often be controversial, I think they succeed at bringing together a campus of thousands through humour, gossip, and drama. The Tea feels uniquely Warwick. No other university page seems to post so many submissions or spark such engagement, and I think that’s certainly something worth celebrating. Ultimately, the question is not whether the Tea made an impact, but whether a new admin team will be able to rise to the challenge, or if another account will take its place.