Kousmichoff worked with the fat burning tea merchant till his marriage in 1867, when Kousmichoff was given a small slimming tea house by the tea service provider. Sipping hot tea or espresso would also often stain moustaches. Moustaches flourished throughout the Victorian period, and by the early twentieth century, the British Army required troopers to develop a moustache. The ledge, appetite control tea known as a moustache guard, has a half moon-shaped opening to allow the passage of liquids and serves as a guard to maintain moustaches dry. Malcolm's miserly boss on the pet shop is named Geoffrey Perkins, then the pinnacle of Comedy on the BBC. On Malcolm's birthday she says, "It's days like this I wish your father wasn't bedridden!" Malcolm can also be fairly unmoved by his father's condition