If you have a tickly cough

This is what we do in our house:

Eat apple every so often, including in the middle of the night when you wake coughing.
Stop eating sugar for a few hours, because bugs like sugar, this includes cough sweets in my case.
Eat little and frequently, moves bugs in the throat away from where they are muliplying.
Stop drinking tea and coffee, they are a little rough on the throat.
Drink smooth drinks like milk and water.

The tickle should go away.

If/when it tries again, just revert to these treatments until it goes away again.

I used to get bad coughs which went on for weeks, but since realising that cough sweets and sugar were probably inadvertently making it worse, I changed my approach and have been cough free for years now.