GRADUATE Tom Lillicrap and Georgie Carter, from Eynsham, came up with a bright idea after months of fruitless job-hunting – a giant scented teabag for the bath.

Mr Lillicrap, 23, said: “We were looking at tourist shops in Oxford and there was nothing that spoke of Oxford which looked like a nice gift.

“We wanted something uniquely British, but small enough for a tourist to be able to take home in a suitcase. We thought teabags were quintessentially English, so we decided we could come up with something to go in the bath.”

Now they spend hours in the spare room of their home, packing organza bags with flower petals, Epsom salts and fragrance to make the Giant Bath Teabag, having set up a business called Oxford Secrets.

Mr Lillicrap said: “We hand-make them all ourselves at the moment. We source the flowers from the Cotswolds, the Epsom salts come from Epsom and the fragrance from a bit further away.”

The pair met when they were studying music business at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford and settled together in the area where Ms Carter, a former pupil of Witney’s Wood Green School, grew up.

Mr Lillicrap said: “We started with the idea in February and it has been hard work – but actually easier than finding a full-time job.”

The couple have persuaded 12 shops in and around Oxford to stock the teabags and they are selling well, with one shop in Woodstock having reordered twice.

The Giant Bath Teabag comes in four different flavours and sells for £7.50 through their website, oxfordsecrets.com , which also has details of local stockists.