The Blindboy Podcast - A history of Irish Summer Salads and Taytos
Episode Date: July 21, 2021200th episode. A critical look at Irish summer salads, and Tayto crisps in Irish Culture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
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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.
It's not real.
It's not real.
Who said that?
The First Omen.
Only in theaters April 5th.
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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
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It's a beautiful model.
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podcast that you listen to. Support any independent podcast that you listen to because the podcast
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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
many different
parts
many disparate
parts
cobbled together
in the blistering
heat
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