The Blindboy Podcast - A history of Irish Summer Salads and Taytos

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

200th episode. A critical look at Irish summer salads, and Tayto crisps in Irish Culture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grease the priest you eavesdropped breeders. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. This is the 200th fucking episode. This is the 200th episode of the Blind Boy Podcast. And I just found that out there. So I don't actually have anything special planned at all. Because I just found out it was the 200th episode. And if you remember the 100th episode episode which was about a year and a half

ago you had the 100 episode I kind of regret the 100 episode so what happened was to celebrate the 100 episode I decided I'm gonna drink a bottle of wine I'm gonna drink a bottle of wine. I'm going to drink a bottle of wine while doing the 100 episode. And I'd never done a podcast with a bottle of wine on board. And it was enjoyable for me. But the problem is, is that the wine kind of reduced my cognitive function. And halfway through that podcast, I ended up speaking about this true story. About a ghost over in America. There was a ghost over in America by the name of Andy.

And he was born with no feet. And Andy the ghost had no feet, so his owner put shoes on the ghost. And then the ghost became famous in America in the 80s as this fucking ghost with shoes and then one day he was brutally killed in an almost

ritualistic fashion and I always regret that 100 podcast because it was a wasted opportunity I could have done a really rigorous

serial style investigation into the murder of this fucking goose who wore shoes like I ended up diving deep into it and finding out about his owner being part of this weird cult who drove around in children's cars

and wore weird hats and it just started unravelling itself but I was fucking drunk. While I was telling the story. And I always regret that. I regret the 100 episode. It's like why the fuck. Why the fuck didn't I do it sober.

And tell the story of the goose with shoes. Properly. Because I think some people thought I was making it up. I was like no. There was a fucking goose. Called Andy in America. And he had no no. There was a fucking goose called Andy in America and he had no feet and his owner put shoes in him

and he was famous and he was ritualistically murdered. So I'm not drinking for the 200th episode. The name of that episode was Glenrow Speedball and it was released on the 4th of September 2019 if you'd like to go back and hear it. So I've nothing special planned for the 200 episode.

And yeah I'm kind of disappointed in myself over that then as well. It's like every time we have a fucking centenary. With this podcast. I disappoint myself. So the first time for the 100 I got drunk. And now for 200. I'm not drunk and I haven't been drinking. But I'm going to put it down to the fact that I didn't even know

it was the 200 episode I'm gonna put it down to what I call Irish Summer Salad Theory and I'll expand on that now in a minute right so it's unbelievably hot right now it's incredibly hot it's unbelievably hot right now

it's incredibly hot it's about might be 31 degrees I don't ever remember Ireland being this hot it's peak summer very fucking hot it's so hot

as I record this right now, I'm practically nude, I'm practically nude, out of necessity, it's so fucking hot, that I reckon the audio fidelity, might be slightly better this week, because,

like really, really expensive microphones, I'm talking microphones microphones that you spend like that cost about 10 grand there's microphones that cost 10 grand like rihanna would use them and these really really expensive microphones they have like a thing built into them that heats up the air immediately around the microphone because that aids how the sound travels and is received

by the microphone so using that heat theory I reckon this week's podcast is going to even sound better but it's unspeakably hot and not just in the day time in the night time so I'm trying to sleep in the night time

and sweating excessively and then I assume the only context my body has for excessive night time sweating is when I have a fever so then I start getting mad fever type dreams I dreamt that I was flying around the place on a jet pack and crashed into a shopping centre and then experienced great embarrassment

for having done that and created a spectacle then woke up feeling embarrassed about an imaginary jetpack and a shopping centre that Limerick doesn't even have so I opened my window something you rarely do in Ireland at night time I opened my window and said

I'm going to sleep with the window open. See what happens. No fucking breeze outside. But there's about. I estimate there's three mosquitoes. In Limerick City. And one of them came into my room. And.

Didn't even. Didn't even bite me. Rejected me. Like literally had a good old sniff. And said. Nah. Not interested in this cunt's blood. interested in this rejected me and what it did do was spend a a ferocious amount of time just hanging around my ear buzzing probably telling me via its wings why my blood isn't good enough for it so that's the deal

we're getting amazing weather right, we're getting the past two days has been the type of weather that Irish people travel to Spain and Portugal for okay, which is a good thing because most people aren't going on holidays because of coronavirus, we're staying at home

so you'd be thinking, isn't it lovely that we get to have this Spanish fucking weather? But the thing is, when you're an Irish person, you can't actually enjoy that weather when it happens in Ireland. You have to go to a different country to enjoy it. Now what I'm talking about here is sustained heat night and day, clouds non-stop sunshine like mediterranean weather that's what i'm talking about and that's what we've had for the past three days usually with ireland and sunshine like it's not bleak all the time but usually what happens is you get a sunny day and it's a little bit warm and then a cloud comes in and you're like oh fuck I need my

jacket and then the cloud goes away and it's warm again and just carries on like that but for the past week we've had proper Spanish weather we're getting hot dry sustained sunshine and what that does to an Irish person in Ireland it it doesn't we don't enjoy it it gives us fucking stage fright it gives us stage fright so I'm out the back garden wondering

am I, Jesus this weather is fucking incredible man, this is the exact same as Spain, wow am I enjoying it the right way oh my god I'm wearing shorts I've got my top off. I've got suntan cream on. It smells like coconuts. Am I enjoying this enough? Am I enjoying this enough? Now, if I was in Spain and it was the exact same weather, I'd be like, this is fucking gorgeous. I'm going to sit gonna sit down gonna get a sangria this is the life

oh I could live over here this is amazing gonna sit in the shade now for a while wow this is incredible I'm gonna take things slow just like the Spanish I'm gonna take things slow the glass is half full but when you're in fucking Ireland

the glass is half empty because you know, it might only be one day out of the whole year, you know that like this, this sustained hot dry sunshine, it could be gone tomorrow, so when it happens, you're overcome with this anxiety, that you mustn't waste it, so you're terrified of staying indoors. Like I found myself washing clothes, like washing towels. I was washing towels that didn't even need to be washed just because of the drying that was out there. Just because. It's like if I wash these fucking towels, they're going to dry in a half an hour not like normally where I wash some towels put them out in the line

there's a bit of sun then it rains gets them wetter than when they were when I washed them then I dry them indoors and when I dry them indoors they get that smell that dried indoor towel smell

which you can't fucking describe it'd be like if a male cat fucked a block of cheddar and they had a fragrant child and then your towel smells like that. And then you dry yourself with the towel. And then you smell like that. So then you have to have a second shower.

Wash the towel again. And put the radiator on in July. So when it's fucking this type of weather that we're having. You're just washing towels just for the drying. Just for the drying that's out there. Which induces a huge amount of fucking anxiety. Because you're hanging a towel with one hand and trying to get a suntan with the other. Saying to yourself, this weather is amazing.

Am I making the most of it? Am I doing my best? Should I be doing this better? It's like when you're 18 and you're allowed to have your first legal pint. Like we've all had tipples before we were 18. But when you're 18 and you can walk into a pub and you can have your first legal drink. You take it too far. Because of the anxiety.

You're like, so I can have a pint? Yeah, you're 18, aren't you? Yeah, I know, but like, you're sure? Yeah, of course you're 18, have the pint. But you don't believe it. So you're like, I better have nine, just in case. You don't just enjoy your pint. You take it too far.

And by 11 o'clock, they're escorting you out of the pub because you've just shat your pants. And I had that, well, I had a similar experience. I didn't have that exact experience. I didn't shit my pants. That happened to my friend, same age as me. And I still remember it she fucking

she went out on her 18th had a rake of pints she shat her tights and the worst part is then I've spoken to her about this

she won't mind but she had to emigrate soon after she emigrated to Hong Kong so you only see her like once a year

and everyone sees her once a year but because she's been in Hong Kong. So you only see her like once a year. And everyone sees her once a year. But because she's been in Hong Kong the whole time. All these years after. Our only context for her in Limerick is when she shat her tights. A uniquely Irish post-recession tragedy. The Irish sunshine is a bit like that when you get hot weather. It's like I must enjoy all this sun properly to the best

of my ability and I can't fuck this up. And then the anxiety of that means that what would normally be a relaxing day in Spain is a terrible day in Ireland

and the hot weather then starts to become unwelcome. So all of us now after three days of 30 degree temperatures are just begging for some sideways rain. We thrive in the certainty of cold sideways rain because you can trust it cold sideways rain is to Ireland what a lovely dry sustained hot day is to the Spanish or to people in Turkey because think of it this way when the weather's shit that's when you can actually relax that's when you can plan out your day you look out the window it's gray the rain is sideways and cold and you just say to yourself if I have to go out I know what type of jacket to wear I know what type of shoes to wear and I'm going to plan out my day to have some stew and some hot cups of tea and read some books and I know what I'm going to

watch on TV too and then we can relax when there's freezing cold sideways rain but when it's sunny it just feels like an unwelcome guest it feels like a guest who was loads of fun at two o'clock in the day you know they were welcome, their exuberant, outgoing, bright personality was making everyone laugh at 2pm but then as everyone else starts to kind of wind down

they're still maintaining the same energy, now it's 12 at night and they're downstairs really loudly trying to get a game of Trivial Pursuit going while people are yawning and looking at their watches and you just want them to leave. So that's the sunshine right now in Ireland. We're longing for freezing cold sideways rain

because you can rely upon it. It ties in a bit with the podcast last week on attachment theory, you know? Sideways rain is like, I'm a fucking asshole. I'm an absolute prick. But you know what? is like i'm a fucking asshole i'm an absolute prick but you know what i'm gonna be here tomorrow i'm gonna be here the day after that i'm never gonna leave but at the very least you can rely upon me you can trust me and eventually you're gonna love me but when the sun visits ireland it's, I'm amazing. I'm so much fun. I'm brilliant.

But you can't trust me to stick around. You can probably trust that I'm going to reject you. So therefore, you can't love me. So you'd rather embrace the cold sideways rain than tolerate the anxiety of my affection. So yeah, it's fucking roasting hot it's roasting hot and i mentioned at the start of the podcast that the reason i forgot that this was the 200 episode and why it wasn't like important to me or why i didn't even notice it i'm gonna put it down to ir Irish summer salad theory and I've spoken about the Irish summer salad before

it's a culinary phenomenon that's unique to Ireland that if you grew up in Ireland you know what the fuck I'm talking about so basically one week a year maybe two weeks if we're lucky but generally one week a year we get this Spanish weather.

Okay? And the extreme heat that we're not used to, combined with the aforementioned anxiety of the sunshine, causes us to shut down a little bit. And we refuse to cook normal dinners. When you're a child, you really fucking dread this. This is the double-edged blade of... Now, when you're a fucking child, when I was a child, I wasn't going around the place with this anxiety about the weather.

I was simply enjoying it. When you got that week of sunshine, you enjoyed it when you were a child. This anxiety I'm talking about is adult stuff, but when you were a child, it's like, this is incredible. But then you knew, fuck, my ma's not going to make any dinners. She's going to say, it's too hot, I'm making a salad. Now there's nothing wrong with salads. A fucking, a well-made salad is a beautiful thing but the irish summer salad is not a well-made salad it's an anxiety response it's a culinary anxiety response it's rooted in chaos

it's a cry for help on a plate it's whatever disparate cold foodstuffs that can be purchased in a petrol station, assembled in a hodgepodge fashion and presented as a meal. thick slices of cold cheddar cheese half a boiled egg that's cold slices of cucumber pronounced cucumber lettuce but not crunchy iceberg lettuce that green leafy leathery lettuce

and then drenched in in salad cream how do I describe salad cream? Salad cream is like. It's like vinegar doing it's best mayonnaise impression. And all of these things together. Are the traditional Irish summer salad. They're the ones.

If you grew up in the fucking. The 80's or 90's. Those are the ones you remember. Now I'm sure today. Like post Celtic Tiger the quality of summer salad that's been had in Irish houses is probably better

because we've better access to ingredients delis are better people might be having some potato salad fucking olives feta cheese couscous now you could be having a fucking decent salad on a hot day

but the traditional Irish summer salad. It's much more emotional than culinary. It's someone saying. It's someone with the anxiety of. Should I be outside enjoying that sun? If I cook a dinner it's going to be too hot. Also I'll be indoors for too long. So I need to prepare food

indoors for the least amount of time possible because I need to be out there enjoying that sun also I need to make sure I'm doing all the washing to put it out there so it gets dried properly fuck what'll I do boil an egg get cold ham, deal with it. Assemble it frantically on the plate until the feelings of panic subside. Now very interestingly, during the week, in a restaurant in Limerick, I saw them trying to do kind of a hipster version of the Irish salad. It had the chaotic, anxious aesthetics of the traditional Irish summer salad but it was clear that a chef had had to think about this so it looked like the Irish summer salad but it wasn't

so instead of cold deli ham it was proper thick slices of good cooked ham the egg was like a Japanese tea stained egg like you'd find in a bowl of ramen. And there was three or four different types of cheeses. And there was rocket and all these other greens with a dressing on it. And then the height of bougie-ness.

It contained Ballymalu relish, otherwise known as Protestant ketchup. Ballymalu relish is a condiment that Irish people keep in their fridges and we don't really eat it. We just keep it in our fridge when we're thinking about buying a second car but we can't afford it. But Nick, back to the Irish summer salad. Like I guarantee you, everyone who's listening to this, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly what the Irish summer salad to this you know exactly what I'm talking about you know exactly what the Irish summer salad is and you

know from your childhood you have received this salad on a very hot day right it's the exact same salad up and down Ireland I mean did all the parents in Ireland throughout the decades get together and decide upon one

salad like how does that happen how does every ma and da in the country make the same salad on a hot day what's that about and I can't find an answer for it I've searched high and low for an answer to the origins of the Irish summer salad so my personal opinion on it the Irish summer salad. So, my personal opinion on it, the Irish summer salad is a salad that's made by someone who's never seen a salad, but had it described to them, or maybe

they saw it from a distance. And I have a personal kind of post-colonial theory about this. So, the Irish salad doesn't exist when you look it up. The Irish summer salad doesn't exist when you try and find out, research about it, it doesn't exist when you look it up the Irish summer salad doesn't exist when you try and find out research about it, it doesn't exist

what does exist is the English salad specifically the English garden salad right now the English garden salad contains bit of lettuce cucumber

radishes there's no egg and then some cheese and the English garden salad looks a bit like an Irish salad from a distance so my theory is 100 years ago, 150 years ago when it was hot in Ireland

salad would have been very posh very, very posh your average Irish Catholic poor person isn't going to be eating this salad who is going to be eating salad on a summer's day are English landlords who own land in Ireland and English landlords would have servants and those servants would have been the local poor Irish people so I think our great, great grandparents

were handed a salad in the kitchen of the landlord's home, had to bring the salad from the kitchen up to the landlord's table and during that brief time they were just mesmerised at the plate they were holding going, what the fuck is this? Salad? I've never heard that word.

What is this? And then they looked at all this food together things like lettuce and they go oh that looks a bit like a cabbage then they're looking at a radish going I don't know what the fuck that is ah cheese I know what that is so they're glancing down at this salad that they have to bring to the landlord they committed to memory and then they never see the salad again. And the salad gets introduced into the Irish memory. Then what happens? 1920s. The British leave the 26 counties of the south.

They're gone. But the houses are still there. The priests move in. And now you get to the 1930s, the 1940s. And who has the power? The priests. And the priests have servants. And then the priests are like, I'm important, it's a hot day, I want to have a salad like I'm a British landlord.

And then they say to the people who are helping them, make me a salad. But they don't know what a salad is. They just have memory that's handed down to them. And then they assemble the Irish summer salad through that. You know, radishes became beetroot. that's handed down to him and then they assemble the Irish summer salad through that you know radishes became beetroot they remembered the lettuce correctly they remembered the cucumbers correctly

someone said throw an egg in it was there eggs involved I don't know maybe not there was definitely cheese sure the fucking priest doesn't know either he's a paddy too the stuck up cunt and then it's just served up

in the parochial house and I think this is how it ended up on Irish tables today and the reason I kind of have that theory I've no evidence for that theory it's based anecdotally on a story about my grandmother down in West Cork

in like the 1940s or whatever 1930s and because my dad would have told me this she so whatever used to happen down in or whatever in 1930s and because my dad would have told me this she so whatever used to happen down in West Cork so in small Irish rural communities the local parish

priest sometimes members of the community had to host the local parish priest in their house to give a service or something and then a few of the neighbours would come over but you had to feed the priest and I know this used to give my grandmother severe anxiety because she didn't know what the fuck do you feed the priest he lives in a house and he has servants what do you feed the fucking priest and I remember one story in particular that

absolutely mortified my poor grandmother but in in one instance, she was hosting the parish priest in her house and she had to provide the parish priest with a breakfast. Okay. Now, she knew she was going to make him a fry up. So that's rashers, eggs, sausages. Very simple. But obviously she's self-conscious about this. So she's consulting all her friends going what should

I feed the priest so now there's other women involved in helping to feed the priest in her house so my grandma makes this fry up for the priest's breakfast and then one of the other women comes over and she has a jar of mustard, right? Now my grandmother had never seen mustard. She'd never heard about mustard. She didn't know what mustard was. So as the plate is in the kitchen with the rashers, sausages and eggs, my grandmother's friend takes out this jar of mustard and just smears some mustard on the plate for the priest.

The priest is just about to eat into this breakfast and then my grandmother sees the mustard on the plate and she starts freaking out she starts screaming and saying don't stop stop stop stop to the priest

I'm so sorry I'm so sorry and then the priest is like what's wrong and she's like I'm so sorry and she takes a fucking tablecloth and she wipes the mustard off the priest's plate and she says to him I'm so sorry those chickens get everywhere she thought one of her fucking chickens had come into the kitchen and shat on the priest's plate because she'd never seen mustard before and this wouldn't have been just my grandma. That would have been a common reaction.

For loads of like just regular poor Irish people. In the early part of the 20th century. But this is the same woman. Who would have been asked to prepare a salad for the priest. And she wouldn't have known what a salad was. And she would have had to have contacted a friend. Who may have worked. In catering or whatever. and had a salad described to her

and I'm guessing that's where the roots of the Irish salad lie that's why the Irish summer salad is so fucking bizarre and it's never had time to develop or change or perfect as a recipe because it's something that's made at the last minute

when the sun decides to come out for three days once a year and also rooted in the trauma and anxiety of colonialism now that's that's a roasting hot take but someone give me a decent answer where did the irish summer salad come from but that's also why this week's podcast is an Irish summer salad podcast. Because I've been so distracted by the heat, I didn't notice it was the 200 episode. I didn't notice it. I didn't put much thought into it. And now I'm assembling an Irish summer salad with words. I'm going to continue on with a culinary theme, I think.

Because I was also asked a bunch of questions this week that I'd like to answer and I picked two questions that have been asked of me that actually relate to food in Ireland. One of the questions was can I talk about why Tato crisps are different in the south of Ireland than the north of Ireland and also can I talk about why all the chip shops in Ireland In the south of Ireland and the north of Ireland. And also can I talk about why.

All the chip shops in Ireland. Were founded by Italian people. So I am going to talk about these two things. And I have some little hot takes. But before that let's have an ocarina pause. On April 5th. You must be very careful Margaretgaret it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all for you no no don't the first omen i believe the girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real.

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CA dot com forward slash the blind boy podcast and 200 episodes in I just want to say thank you, thank you to not just my patrons but just for anyone who's been fucking listening to this podcast over 200 episodes, I did not think that this was possible, lads I started this thing fucking 3 years ago, just as a

way to promote my book, I thought I was only going to do about four episodes I didn't think in my fucking long career which is nearly 20 years I didn't think that like this podcast would be the thing where it's like wow this is where I can earn a living this is my fucking job this is the thing that I can do every week to be creative, to be creative and to earn a living from that creativity. Before this podcast I was working mainly in television and TV was mostly just disappointments, mostly ideas that get shut down before they get to turn into anything and I got to make a lot of tv that

I was really happy with and whatever but like every single episode of this podcast these are ideas that I would have said to a radio station or said to a tv company and they just would have gone nowhere the ideas would have gone absolutely nowhere like I would have gone to someone like RTE and said to him let me do a documentary about Irish people the sun and its relationship with the Irish summer salad I guarantee you I can make it work and it would have fallen on deaf ears because ideas like that are just they're a bit too much out there for TV commissioners and and at best they would have said. Okay you can do something about Irish summer salads. But can you also make it about Ronan Keating.

So this podcast. All my hot takes. All the ideas. That I get. I get to work through them. I get to have the time. To research them. To produce it myself.

To put it out without anyone fucking getting involved and put out something each week that i fucking love making and now we've got like 30 million people have listened to this and it's not just ireland it's it's mostly outside of fucking ireland like i'm planning a north american tour at the moment. I've like 2,000 listeners in Delaware. I don't even know where the fuck Delaware is. I just know it's in America. So this podcast has been bigger and been a more creative success than if I'd have stuck with television, that traditional route. And instead of having ideas shot down by commissioners it's just like

fuck it i'll do it myself i'll do it myself i know that this idea can work so i'll fucking do it myself and i don't need rte to pay for it or for tv3 or whoever to pay for it or bbc the fucking listeners pay for it and it's independent and i make what i want to make and people like it so thank you to all of you for making that possible and not just my patrons the people who simply just listen to it and tell other people about it thank you so much that's why we're at 200 episodes that's why we're at 30 million listens and I can't wait to just I'm just gonna keep going with it I'm just gonna keep going because I fucking love doing this

fucking monologue essays that I get to write like fiction about things I'm really passionate about what more could I want alright so if you are enjoying it if you like it

just please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing because it is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBoyPodcast

And if you can't afford that, don't worry. You continue listening for free. If you don't have a job right now, whatever, you can listen for free. And if you can't afford to pay me for the work that I'm doing, you're paying for the people who can't afford it. Everyone gets a podcast. I earn a living.

And we get to keep the whole thing independent. No one steps in and says, do it differently. Don't talk about this. Don't talk about that. It's a beautiful model. And also, don't forget to support my podcast, but any independent podcast that you listen to. Support any independent podcast that you listen to because the podcast

space is becoming very commercialised. Follow me on Instagram, Blind By Boat Club. Follow me on Twitch, twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast. I make music to the events of a video game once a week, Thursday nights, half eight. Dog bless. So, two questions I was asked. Why is there a difference in Tate Huss in the north of Ireland than the south of Ireland? And why are there so many chip shops in Ireland that are Italian? So, I want to answer both those questions alongside each other because they can tie in right

first off what are tatoes if you're an international listener what are tatoes tatoes are potato crisps they're Irish potato crisps or potato chips that you might call them if you're living in Delaware

so in Ireland we've got tatoes and there's different taters in the 26 counties of the south than there is in the 6 counties of the north they're completely different I'm going to speak about that and also in Ireland

we've got chip shops now these are the same as the chip shops you'd have in the fucking UK you're talking about french fries right if you're a yank. Greasy fried potatoes. But in Ireland, uniquely, all of our chip shops are founded by Italian families. Like eight or nine different Italian families all over Ireland. Why is this the case?

So first off, we're talking about potatoes. And in Ireland, we've got an incredibly intimate, close relationship with potatoes. Okay? The potato came over from South America. I spoke about this a couple of podcasts back. Came over from fucking South America and it thrived in Ireland. And we existed in a society under British rule for several hundred years and for a lot of that all our food was being exported right our carrots or whatever was all being exported by the British because they were they were colonizing us and extracting our economic resources which meant that most of the people of Ireland who were poor Catholics were forced to live on only potatoes because that's all you could grow when you didn't have a lot of land

and your food was being exported. Potatoes did a couple of things for us. When things were going well, potatoes actually made Irish people some of the healthiest population in Europe because potatoes are a complete food. They contain all the vitamins you need, all the carbohydrates, they contain protein. So there were periods in history after the 1500s where Irish people were really healthy and big and strong and quite tall as Europeans went because our staple diet of potatoes was giving us really really good

nutrition but because we relied only on the potato we had several famines which caused mass starvation and the halving of our population through death and emigration but we still maintained our love for potatoes. So let's first look at the history of chips, as we call them in Ireland and the UK, or French fries, as they're known in America or whatever, right? Fried potatoes. Let's look at the history of them first. So there was this bizarre situation, right? Known as the Little Ice Age.

From about 1650 to the mid-1800s there was a natural occurrence of climate change where the earth experienced what was called a Little Ice Age. For about 200 years temperatures dropped quite a bit and this led to extreme winters pretty cold extreme winters and the story of french fries doesn't actually it's not actually france it's belgium in the 1700s okay so potatoes would have come over to europe around 1492 okay with part of the colombian exchange which Columbus quote unquote discovered in America, so by the 1700s potatoes would have been quite common around Europe, so in Belgium

right, in a place called Namur this was during the middle of this fucking little ice age when everything was fucking when the winters were really really cold so in 1680 there's this river in Belgium called the Meuse. And it froze over completely.

And the people in this village. They used to love to eat fried fish. That was the dish that they ate in this village was fried fish. But because the river was frozen over. They had no. Fucking fish. This winter. Because of the little ice age age the climate event that was happening

the world over so someone in belgium in the 1700s said fuck it we can't have our little fried fish because the river's frozen over what are we gonna do so someone figures out let's get a potato and cut the potato into little fish sized chunks like these small little fish and let's let's deep fry the potato like we deep fry the fish and chips were born in that moment because of the little ice age so they're actually they're belgian and they became very popular in belgium as this food so that there like that's like the accepted theory so people argue over well that's the most

plausible accepted theory but they can't fully prove that that is the origin story but it's the accepted one and then how did they get to be called French fries that happened in

World War 1 American soldiers were in Belgium and they were getting these Belgian fish potato fries the Yanks didn't know the difference between Belgium and France and they were getting these Belgian fish potato fries the Yanks didn't know the difference between Belgium

and France and they started to love them and called them French fries so it was US soldiers that christened them erroneously French fries which is ironic because after 9-11 Britain and America

wanted to invade Iraq, right? And I think they either went to the UN or NATO, but France said, no way, you can't go to Iraq. This proof that you have of weapons of mass destruction doesn't look good enough to me. We don't vote that we should all go to war in Iraq. And the Americans, as a a protest they stopped calling french fries french fries and started calling them freedom fries instead even though it was American soldiers who wrongly

named them french fries in the first place or Belgian fries but how do french fries big thick chips fried potato in deep fat oil how do they turn into crisps or chips as you'd call them in oil how do they turn into crisps or chips as you'd call them in America

how do they become crisps because crisps are basically french fries they're tiny, they're little potatoes that are very thinly sliced and deep fried in oil how does that happen? so these potatoes, pommes frites as the Belgians would have called them before they were called French fries

they would have been served in very fancy restaurants in the US and in the UK so in the US they were on menus like I'm talking the mid 1800s now they were on the menu in fancy restaurants as potatoes

fried in the French way and there's an interesting story here and again it's one of those ones that it's seen as the most plausible reason but it's not a hundred percent they can't prove it but this is the most plausible explanation as to how crisps were invented. So there was this fancy restaurant in New York and they were serving these potatoes fried in the French way, which are chips, whatever you call it. And one of the guests who'd ordered this was being a bit of a prick. The guest was like,

he'd ordered the fried potatoes, they'd arrived down at his table and then he'd say, send them back to the chef these are too thick and then he kept getting sent these fried potatoes each time thinner and thinner and he was just sending them back sending them back now one thing i find interesting about this particular story the person in question was called cornelius vanderbilt. Now the Vanderbilt family are, they're like a famous New York, incredibly wealthy family, industrial family of the American industrial revolution, right? They would be, they would have started off, I think, in like the 1700s,

1800s. They built railways. This fella, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was the customer ordering the chips in the restaurant, he's actually the great, great, great grandfather of Anderson Cooper, the fella who presents the news in America. But anyway, his great, great, great grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, was sending back these fried potatoes

saying, I don't like them, make them thinner, make them thinner. Now what's interesting about this is, this reminds me of something that Donald Trump was reported to do at restaurants as well so the thing is with Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Vanderbilt family they would have been like they built all the railways on the east coast of America so this fella would have been a multi multi-millionaire in the 1850s okay and he would have been considered nouveau riche which means that they were americans that had recently become hugely wealthy but they would have been looked down upon by wealthy english people who would have been descended from royals or even people

in new york who would have been descended from royalty so the Vanderbilt family even though they were incredibly wealthy were not considered posh they would have been looked down upon so they would have been called nouveau riche and Trump there's stories about Trump when he goes to restaurants that when Trump is at a table with a bunch of people what Trump will do deliberately is when food comes down he keeps sending it back and he's really awkward about it and he keeps sending it back and what Trump is doing is he's trying to show power to the rest of the table that if he's awkward and keeps sending his food back then he must be the most powerful influential person there and i find it interesting

that this cornelius vanderbilt fella in america in the 1850s was doing the same thing with chips so vanderbilt keeps sending back his fried potatoes no i want them skinnier i want them skinnier probably showing off to the people at his table trying to show that like he's the princess and the pea oh I need my chips perfect, I'm going to keep sending them back until they're just right and eventually the chef gets so pissed off because he's sent back

four plates of chips that almost as a joke as an aggressive joke he cuts the potatoes so thin that they just crumble in the oil. They crumple up into these weird things. And he puts salt on them and he sends them out to the table.

And your man Vanderbilt eats them and is like, holy fuck, these incredibly skinny fried potatoes are perfect. And apparently that's where crisps were born. Because of an absolute rich cunt who had to keep sending his potatoes back

to show off to the people around him but that there is seen as the accepted origin story for where crisps came from now let's go back to Ireland and french fries or chips as we call them that's how it's getting confusing because chips are crisps in America. But let's go back to Ireland before crisps.

And let's talk about chips. French fries. So they obviously didn't exist in Ireland. Until. An Italian fella. Right. And this was in the 1880s. So you're talking fucking.

40 years after the Irish potato famine. This Italian fella who came from a place near Rome called Giuseppe Sarvi. He wanted, he was trying to emigrate to America, right? This Italian man. And he accidentally ended up in Ireland for some reason. In Cove down in Cork. He got off his ship early or whatever. He's Italian, it's 1880.

He doesn't have a lot of money. He mightn't know the difference. So this Italian man, called Giuseppe Carvi, ends up in Cork. Then he walks to Dublin, spends a bit of time as a labourer, and while he's in Dublin in the 1880s, he kind of goes,

Jesus, these Irish people sure love their fucking potatoes, don't they? So he makes himself a little cart and tries to start selling roast potatoes on the fucking streets of Dublin. And then eventually starts, instead of roasting the potatoes because it was taking too long, he starts frying the potatoes. And now he's selling french fries to the people of Dublin in the fucking 1880s.

And eventually he opens up his own shop on where Peer Street is now. So his chip shop starts doing really well. And I think your man Giuseppe basically just started writing home saying I'm doing great business here in Ireland selling fried potatoes to the Irish so all these other Italian families

from a province in Italy, they all come from one small province called Frasinone it's like six different villages there all these families come over like the Barzas, the Caffellos and the Macaris and they started setting up these Italian chip shops

all over Ireland and they became really really popular and by 1909 there was 200 chip shops in Dublin alone and the mad thing is if you go into a chip shop today in 2021 if you ask for fish and chips sometimes it's called a one and one, right? A one and one.

That literally comes from that original chip shop in the 1880s from Peer Street that Giuseppe Sarvi set up. His wife used to say to people, do you want a one and one? And you even take it further when you go to a Chinese takeaway today in Ireland and you ask for a four-in-one which is curry sauce chicken rice and chips you can trace that four-in-one right back to the one-in-one of the Italian chip shops of the 1880s in Dublin so that's kind of why there's so many Italian chip shops in Ireland So that's kind of why there's so many Italian chip shops in Ireland. One fella came here by accident in the 1880s,

thought he was going to America, started it up, told a load of people back home, and now all the lovely chips in Ireland are made by Italian families. Like a happy accident. So have we the Irish any historical? Have we done anything to influence fried potatoes or chips or crisps or whatever you want to call them? But we did. So the other question that was asked is why are tatoes different in the south of Ireland than the north of Ireland? So first off, tatoes.

So in Ireland we have crisps and we love our crisps. In Ireland, we have crisps and we love our crisps. And these crisps, like I said, these are the tiny skinny potatoes that are fried because of Anderson Cooper's great, great, great grandfather over in New York. So this made it to Ireland and a fella called Joe Spud Murphy started making the first crisps in Ireland. And he founded a company called Tato. So when we want crisps in Ireland, he founded a company called Tato so when we want crisps in Ireland regardless of the brand we tend to just call them Tato's like the way a hoover is a vacuum

but hoover is a brand so you call all vacuums hoovers in Ireland crisps we just call them fucking Tato's it's that simple and Tatoe is fucking delicious so here's a little story before i get in more into into joe spud murphy and what he did and how he revolutionized crisps here's a little personal story i want to tell that ties in with this that i think is nicely ironic so i explained there that the the history of crisps right the history of potato chips if the story is to be believed, it's rooted in this fella, Cornelius Vanderbilt,

who was a multi-multi-millionaire, who was being a bit of a dickhead and treating the chef like shit. Keep sending his fucking potatoes back until he eventually ended up with crisps as a joke because the multi-millionaire was being an asshole to a chef. Right?

So in the 1970s, my mother was driving around, I think it was around Tipperary, these really rural roads, okay? And she had a crap Ford Cortina, a car that was falling apart. She's driving around 1970s and she's got my family in the back. Now, I'm not born yet, all my siblings who are children are in the back of her Ford Cortina screaming

and she's driving around rural Ireland in tip these back roads. She gets distracted by the kids shouting and she smashes into the back of a fucking Rolls Royce. Now this is Ireland in the 1970s. There's probably only 10 Rolls Royce. Now this is Ireland in the 1970s. There's probably only 10 Rolls Royces in the country. So she's going, fuck, I've just destroyed some fucking millionaire's Rolls Royce. And in her mind, she's thinking, it's probably a yank. It's probably a rich English person. I'm fucked. So who gets out of the Rolls Royce? Joe Spud Murphy the creator of Taro Crisps and Joe Spud Murphy goes to my ma

now the front of her Ford Cortina which was already falling apart is now smashed up his Rolls Royce is fucked the whole back is gone he goes over to my ma he looks in the back he sees all the kids

he sees her car he reaches into his pocket and he hands her money to get her car fixed says to her forget about it don't even worry about my car no no no we're not caught in any insurance companies you have a lovely day and he drives off in his busted up Rolls Royce after paying for my ma's car to be fixed and she was the one who was wrong and I just think that's a lovely little balance there there's a multi-millionaire being lovely and sound and he's peddling a product that may possibly have

been invented by a multi-millionaire acting like an absolute prick in new york in the 1880s so that was joe spud murphy and how my mother destroyed his Rolls Royce. That's a true story. So anyway, Joe Spud Murphy, the inventor of Taro crisps, he revolutionized crisps because he was the first person to add seasoning to them. So crisps get invented in New York and then they get sold around the world in packets but they're mostly just salted. Joe Spud Murphy figured out we can do it better. We can make cheese and onion. We can make salt and vinegar.

And that's what the Irish brought to the potato crisp. He invented that. So anytime you're around the world and you're eating potato crisps that are more than just ready salted that have all these flavours you go that man there

blind by his mask smashed into the back of his rolls rice and he gave her money for it and that cancels out Cornelius Vanderbilt being a dickhead to service workers so that's what Tato's are Tato's are Irish they were founded by Joe Spudud murphy and if you're outside of ireland then you go into the irish section of a shop the one thing they're selling

is tato crisps which i advise you try because they're delicious but in the north of ireland the six counties of the north of ire which are under, still under British rule, they have different tathos. They're called tathos, but they look different and they taste different. And people up the north, they call southern tathos free stathos, which is a pun on free stater, because of the Irish free state, which is the 26 counties, right? So anyway, it's very simple.

A fella up in Armagh, I don't know when, he was making crisps and he was like, I wouldn't mind having the Tato brand. So he went to Joe Spud Murphy and said, can I have the license to use the Tato brand in the north of Ireland? So Joe Spud Murphy said grand. And they cut a deal. So when you buy Tato's. Up in Belfast or up in Derry.

The only thing that they have in common. With Tato's in Limerick. Is the name. They're different crisps. They're not the same crisp. They're different crisps. The packaging is different. The only thing they share is a name. So when people are arguing about.

Which is better. Southern Tato's or Northern Tato's. There's no argument. The only thing they share is a name. They're different crisps. Now the one thing I do have to say is. I often wonder. In.

The packaging. the mutual packaging of Tato's from the north of Ireland and the south of Ireland is there a subtle semiotics of sectarianism, okay let me explain the mascot of Tato Crisps is a fella called Mr Tato

it's a cartoon spud it's a big cartoon spud who wears a suit and he has a hat. Now there's also possible racist implications with Mr. Tato and I'll tell you why. A very recognisable Irish brand cartoon

in the history of Ireland was Lion's Tea. So we have tea in Ireland called Lion's Tea. But in the 1950s, 60ss 70s lion's tea used to have cartoons of black and white minstrels as their brand mascot and I think Mr Tato because he Mr Tato has the same stripy pants as the lion's tea black and white minstrels had stripy suits so I think Mr Tato borrowed from those stripes of those minstrels and incorporated that into the design.

Now I can't prove that, but I think it's fair to say that if you've got a crisp company and you're designing this mascot that you're going to look at other mascots in Irish advertising and the most recognisable one was a racist one. Lions T had actual black and white minstrels. As their fucking mascots. Up until recently enough. Up until the 90s.

I remember him when I was a kid. But I'm not suggesting that fucking Mr. Tato. Is racist. Because he shares pants. With the Lion's T minstrels. I just think it's an interesting correlation. But anyway. Back to Mr. Tato. So you anyway, back to Mr. Tato.

So you've got Southern Mr. Tato and Northern Mr. Tato. If you look at Northern Mr. Tato, he's still wearing the same suit. He's wearing a bowler hat. He's got these shiny black shoes. He doesn't have stripy pants pants but he does have white gloves and I think Northern Mr. Tato is supposed to look a little bit like a loyalist orange man because why else does he have

the white gloves? He's got the bowler hat he's got the suit, he's got the white gloves, all he's missing is a lamb egg and a sash I think that there's a possible sectarianism in that design. But then you got the southern Mr. Tato and southern

Mr. Tato doesn't have white gloves so he's not an orange man. But if you look at the design of the packet it's very much red, white and blue like a Union Jack and he appears to be huddling it. So maybe southern Mr. Tato is a Leinster West Brit with minstrel pants.

I doubt it very much. And I'd say I'm looking into it far too deeply. But there you go. I'll see you next week. That was the 200th episode. That was definitely an Irish summer salad episode. Cobbled together, many different parts. Many disparate episode cobbled together

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