The Blindboy Podcast - A Psychosexual history of Digestive biscuits and their use as instruments of Physical Force Republicanism

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

A Psychosexual history of Digestive biscuits and their use as instruments of Physical Force Republicanism  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alert the candlelit constabulary, you banjaxed flaherties. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If this is your first time, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. I had a little moment of synchronicity this week. Now when I say synchronicity, I don't refer to something that's supernatural, but rather a little coincidence that I take personal meaning from. I was eating a digestive biscuit. I don't often eat digestive biscuits.

I don't seek them out. I don't buy them. But if I come across a digestive biscuit, I will most definitely partake in it. It's a very simple inoffensive biscuit. There's a satisfying snap when you bite down on a digestive biscuit. Not too much resistance like a rich tea but not so crumbly that it's a shortcake. It's the perfect balance between hard and crumbly. Digestives also, they're not very sweet. They're not as sweet as other biscuits. You wouldn't class them as a confectionery. A digestive biscuit isn't going to spoil your dinner for being too sweet. There's a rumour of sweetness in there, like the smell of golden syrup. And just when you search

for the sweetness, that faint sweetness within a digestive biscuit, you're met with a salty barrier, like a ball cock of salt. Not too salty, but like about as salty as human skin. Like when you lick your own arm on a summer's day. That's how salty a digestive biscuit is. So I was in a hotel room. I was in a shit hotel room in Roscommon. Because I'm filming a documentary for TV, which I can't get into. But I'm travelling all this month and staying in little weird hotels. The type of hotels that have individually wrapped digestive biscuits beside the little kettle that I'm always afraid to use in case someone pissed in it.

But as I was eating this digestive biscuit in the Roscommon Hotel, sitting on the edge of my bed, hotel sitting on the edge of my bed. A single golden itinerant crumb of digestive biscuits landed on the palm of my hand and I took the index finger of my other hand and I gently pressed down on this crumb and started rolling it around. That real tickly sensitive part on the palm of my hand and it brought back very specific memories of the first time I ever touched a boob. When I was 15, it was about the first summer I ever started drinking. Drinking alcohol. I'm not encouraging this. It's just what happened when you were 15.

When I was growing up, you drank alcohol. This is what you did at the weekends. It was a summer's evening. And there was a group of about 11 or 12 of us and we'd managed to source bottles of cider, Linden Village cider, two litre bottles. Because we were teenagers we wanted to drink this cider, we wanted to get drunk. We had to go bush drinking. Bush drinking is what we called it at the time. You couldn't openly drink alcohol when you were 15, not in public, because it was irresponsible and it was dangerous.

It wasn't safe. You're not supposed to drink alcohol when you're 15. You can end up in hospital. So if an adult saw you drinking alcohol, they'd call the guards. And the guards would come, they'd take your alcohol, and they'd bring you home to your parents. So 11 or 12 of us, teenagers, with bottles of cider, we had to find a hidden, secluded area to drink our alcohol. Now this was difficult in the middle of a city, but we managed to find a very large roundabout. A really big roundabout that had a bunch of trees and brambles and nettles in it. So we all went into this big roundabout, hidden amongst the bushes, and drank our cider.

The slanty orange evening sun. Breaking through the leaves. Felt like being in Vietnam. And the sound of all the cars. Wharring around us. Because we're in the middle of a fucking roundabout. Drinking cider. Which was unbelievably dangerous. Now that I think back. But we were 15.

And we had to hide it. But I don't think anyone got. Unbelievably drunk. Because. There was like 12 of us and three two litre bottles of cider and we're sharing it. So we would have all gotten a little bit tipsy and then pretended to be a lot more drunk than we actually were.

There was a fairly even distribution of boys and girls. Because we were all pretending to be way more drunk than we actually were. girls. Because we were all pretending to be way more drunk than we actually were. Someone suggested playing truth or dare. Now we were 15 so we weren't actually going to play truth or dare. No one wanted a truth. No one was asking for a truth. We went immediately for dare. We knew what dare meant. It meant shifting. It meant kissing with tongues. Someone would say, usually it was the girls, the girls would say, I dare you to shift her or I dare you to shift him. And the girls doing it, they had an idea of who fancied who. It was a way to pair people off into couples when we were all a little bit too shy to ask each other ourselves. A year previously we've been at teenage discos

where boys and girls are at opposite sides of the fucking dance floor and then maybe a slow dance at the end and then literal actual fucking nuns, nuns coming in and separating you with a sweeping brush. So we've all done our truth or dare, dare, will you shift her, yes I will and eventually we've all done our truth or dare. Dare. Will you shift her? Yes I will. And eventually we're all paired off into couples and we find our individual spaces within the roundabout. Which meant being slightly tipsy, lying down on nettles with the smell of

rat's piss and yellowed luczade bottles and crisp packets. Lying down on a bed. Of sun bleached. Discontinued confectionery wrappers. I'm talking the wrappers of marathon bars. That's what they used to call Snickers. In the fucking 1980s. I've seen those wrappers in these roundabouts.

When I was a teenager. So I'd been paired off with a girl let's call her Evelyn her name wasn't Evelyn but she was my friend and we fancied each other so we'd been paired off to shift to shift each other on the ground in a hedge

as cars whirled all around us on the roundabout shifting meant kissing with tongues so I start shifting Evelyn and we're both enjoying it. Then after a while, Evelyn gets my hand and puts it up her top. I'd have been much too nervous to be doing that myself. But Evelyn did that and then my hand is up her top and I'm feeling a boob for the first time now I'd been thinking about boobs for a good three years I'd say

and this was the first time and it was fantastic even though my hand was constricted by the wire of a bra and it wasn't very comfortable at all I couldn't believe it there's a boob in my hand for For three years,

I've been like, these things are amazing. I wonder what they feel like. I wonder what they feel like. Now I know I'm feeling one. This is magnificent. I didn't care that there was really, really loud cars whirring around me 10 feet from my head. I didn't care that I was lying on nettles. I didn't care that I could smell rats piss. I didn't care that I was lying on nettles. I didn't care that I could smell rats piss. I didn't care that a marathon rapper was crinkling under my left thigh. I was touching a bobe of a girl I fancied. I was so focused on the bobe that I stopped moving my tongue I think which must have been awful but then I started to notice after a while as as I was feeling Evelyn's boob, there was something extra there.

There was something extra up her bra. It was the tiny crumb of a digestive biscuit. A little sharp thing, digging into my palm. I knew it was a digestive biscuit, because I was familiar with that unique crumble. Now my thoughts are drifting off, thinking about how it got down there. Was Evelyn eating digestive biscuits beforehand? Maybe she was. Maybe it went down her top. This was hugely distracting. This was my first boob. I was marvelling at the softness of a boob. And then you have this completely jarring, conflicting texture in one central spot in the middle of all this. Now it didn't mar the experience.

It was fucking fantastic. I loved it. But an uninvited third party was present in the form of a fucking digestive biscuit crumb up Evelyn's bra. I didn't say anything. The shift ended. And then for weeks and weeks and weeks

because I'm 15 and I'm horny all the time I'm just thinking about my god I can't believe I touched a boob I can't believe that and I keep trying to remember what it felt like but every time I remember what it felt like I can't disassociate the digestive biscuit crumb the sensory memory of the digestive biscuit crumb in the palm of my hand is forever there when I think about touching a bulb. So I'm so excited. I'm thinking about this all the time. Replaying the memory in my head.

Wanting to do it again. But as the days pass, I start introducing I start introducing little digestive biscuit crumbs into my palm deliberately and playing with them with my finger in my palm, like at home, in the classroom, not as a sexual thing. I wasn't fetishising it, but an event of great excitement had occurred in the palm of my hand.

I was thinking about it all the time. This crumb business in my palm was a sensory thing that I enjoyed for weeks afterwards, sometimes even into adulthood when I'd feel boobs. There'd be a little phantom biscuit crumb there in my hand as an indelible sensory memory. Not like here you'd never crumble a few biscuits into your bra, not a digestive biscuit fetish, but a single crumb of a digestive biscuit and a bobe or toe bobes. These things are inseparable for me. But as the weeks went past, after I'd touched Evelyn's bobe, extreme guilt popped up. I started to experience extreme guilt

and shame. And this guilt and shame manifested itself as anxiety. I was 15, so I started to worry. Fuck, what if I got her pregnant? Or what if I have AIDS? I'd been raised with Catholicism since I was four years old. Catholicism, the Catholic religion, was a part of my education every single day in school. And my sex education was given to me by a fucking priest when I was like 13. And they basically brought the priest into school for a day. And the priest's job was to scare the living fuck out of you. The priest told us specifically avoid heavy kissing. Heavy kissing leads to sex.

Sex is a sin. Not only is sex a sin, but you'll get HIV if you have sex. We were explicitly told that sexual diseases or venereal diseases, these things exist as a punishment for the sin of sexual contact before marriage. We were told that if we had a wet dream it meant we slept with the devil. We were told not to masturbate and we were told that if you got an erection and you felt like masturbating that you were supposed to think of a polar bear a polar bear floating in an iceberg and if you think of that you'll lose your boner so I got extreme guilt I got extremely guilty and terrified because I touched a boob I understand it's it's utterly, absolutely ridiculous to think that I might have gotten a girl pregnant by touching her bare boob.

It's equally as ridiculous to think that I might have gotten HIV or AIDS by touching a boob. But I was 15. I didn't have the emotional intelligence or the sexual education to process the complexity of the guilt that I was feeling. So that guilt immediately transformed into very, very irrational anxiety. I started to punish myself. And that punishment was, you've got a disease now, you're going to die. And the digestive biscuit, that little crumb of digestive biscuit became the fucking proof. I became convinced that the little bit of digestive biscuit was actually Christ. Now that's insane. I know it's insane, but try and explain that to a 15 year old in the middle of a panic attack.

Now how did I start to think that this digestive biscuit was Christ? Fucking communion wafers. of biscuit was Christ fucking communion wafers you have to realize when we were like seven or eight a full fucking year of our education a full year of our education this is the 90s this is the 90s I'm like seven or eight a full year of our education was you're going to make your first Holy Communion. You're going to make your first Holy Communion. And every week, as a child, a seven-year-old child, zero capacity for critical thinking, your teacher would prepare you for first Holy Communion every week

in accordance with Catholicism. And we were told as kids, the whole point of communion is that this here is a piece of bread, this is the host. This little wafer here is the host. But once that priest blesses it, it stops being a piece of bread and it becomes the body of Christ.

And even at seven, we all ask the question, how can that be the case, teacher? It's bread. It's a wafer. I can see it. And the teacher goes, no, no, no, no. Once it's blessed, it becomes Christ. But it's bread, teacher.

We can see it. No, it isn't. This is the miracle of transubstantiation. Once the priest blesses it, it becomes't. This is the miracle of transubstantiation. Once the priest blesses it, it becomes Christ, literal. It's a man and the wine is his blood. And you're effectively gaslit. You're gaslit as children to believe that the communion wafer is not a wafer, but is an actual man's flesh.

And if you don't believe that and you don't accept that, then it's a sin and you're not ready for it. So when I was feeling my first bobe at 15 and I experienced the intense Catholic guilt of, I'm doing a dirty, sinful, wrong thing. And no matter what you do, God is always watching. When that biscuit crumb was there and I was getting anxiety

my irrational thoughts immediately went to ah it's Christ that's what he does he showed up he turns into bread that's what he does he's bread

he's bread and bread is him that's what was happening in that bra Christ showed up to let you know that he's seen you being dirty and sinning. And now you've got a disease or she's pregnant. Now you're fucked, buddy.

You're fucked, you are. And I'd spend time at 15 saying to myself, that's fucking ridiculous. Don't be ridiculous. It's just a biscuit. It's just a biscuit. And I'd get nice and calm. And then later on that day anxiety would kick in my heart would start racing and I'd be like no no it was Christ Christ showed up in the bra Christ was there of course he did you touched a boob you touched a

boob you're not married you touched a bare boob that's a sin you can't say it to anyone couldn't say it to my parents what am I going to say to my parents I touched a girl's boob. That's a sin. You can't say it to anyone. Couldn't say it to my parents. What am I going to say to my parents? I touched a girl's boob last week and there was a crumb inside and I think Christ was present. Can't go to your parents. Can't go to the teachers in school. I considered going to confession. Certainly wasn't going to bring it up with Evelyn. Wasn't going to bring it up with the lads. I'm already getting a reputation for being eccentric or mad. I'm sure Nora Divergence is at play here I'm sure the Tisms are involved so I can't turn to anybody

so I did what I'd always do to deal with anxiety when I was a teenager I'd isolate myself and disappear into my encyclopedias there was no internet probably better off there was no internet I cracked open the encyclopedias. There was no internet, probably better off. There was no internet. I cracked open the encyclopedias, went learning everything I could about pregnancy. My encyclopedias were world book encyclopedias from 1979, so there was nothing in there about HIV.

So I went to the library. I went to the library and started researching. I tried to manage my anxiety by learning everything I possibly could about biscuits. About digestive biscuits in particular. There wasn't a huge amount but the woman in the library was very helpful. I didn't tell her why I was researching biscuits. But she did give me a book on the history of baking. And I found a section about biscuits. but she did give me a book on the history of baking and I found a section about biscuits

and I learned that biscuits trace their roots to sailors so this week when I was in my hotel in Roscommon and I'd just eaten a digestive biscuit I started rolling that little bit of biscuit crumb around

around in my palm and it reminded me of that tremendously anxious period of my life. And it inspired me to pick up where I left off with my biscuit research. So biscuits have existed for as long as humans have been baking bread. Biscuits, historically, were a starvation food. You can go back 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent. Humans were farming wheat in little villages and towns and they were grinding up this wheat and baking bread 5,000 years ago. But wheat and bread can spoil. It can go off. It has to be fresh.

So bakers, they'd bake a loaf of unleavened bread. So bread that doesn't rise, it doesn't contain any yeast. Just flour and water, maybe a bit of oil. They'd bake this loaf of bread, cut it up into slices, and then put those slices back in the oven. They'd bake this until all the moisture was gone, completely gone. And what you're left with are these really, really hard bits of bread. They'd break your teeth if you tried to bite them.

And you could store these things for months or years. They'd never go off. And the word biscuit, it comes from the Latin, bis coctos, which means twice cooked, twice baked. That's what biscuit means. It's bread that's been cooked twice. So throughout history, it was a way of preserving wheat. Preserving wheat at a time when it wasn't growing

or if people had to travel a long distance. They'd carry around these biscuits, these really hard pieces of wheat that would never go off. And they'd soak these biscuits in a liquid of some description and eat it. What I find interesting is my teenage paranoia about this digestive biscuit presenting in Evelyn's bra as Christ was actually onto something. A very early type of biscuit is known as matzah. It's unleavened flour and water baked into a crispy like cracker and Jewish people eat this in Passover at the last supper before Jesus's crucifixion he was eating a Passover meal he was sharing a Passover meal

with all his disciples that was the last supper so the bread that he held up and said this is my body and this is my blood the first ever ever fucking communion. That was a biscuit. And as Christianity progressed in the years that followed, and communion being a hugely important part of Christianity, the Catholic Church as it progressed started to make communion hosts or communion wafers or whatever you want to call them. By the 800s, 800 years after the birth of Christ, the church in Europe were making communion wafers in these irons, like early types of waffle irons or like a toasted sandwich maker.

The church would have these irons that have the imprint of a crucifix in it or whatever. They'd put the dough in and then they'd put it over a fire and a communion wafer would pop out by the 9th century communion wafers were so popular and so in demand in like France for instance the church would hire loads of bakeries to just keep making us loads of communion wafers because you see at this point they're just hosts it's just bread it doesn't turn into Christ

until a priest blesses it so in France there was all these bakeries churning out fuck tons of communion wafers selling them to the church but then to make a bit of money on the side the same bakeries were using the communion way for irons with bits of sugar or spices or cinnamon or whatever was available in the 9th century and making the first sweet biscuits. But when the age of colonisation comes about, I'm talking the

1400s onwards, that's when you see a real explosion of biscuits. Ship's biscuits. Now you have the great nations of Europe, quote-unquote, discovering, quote-unquote, the likes of America or Asia. I'm talking Britain, France, Portugal, the Dutch. In like 1500, for a ship to get to the Caribbean from Britain that's like two months at sea how did the sailors feed themselves

on those long journeys because you can't take fresh food with you for two months with no modern refrigeration they ate biscuits specifically a type of biscuit called a ship's biscuit unleavened bread, flour, water

cooked the arse out of it so that it's rock hard and it never ever goes off. And that's what sailors would eat and they'd soak these biscuits in hot water or in rum if they were lucky they had a bit of dried salted meat and these hard tack ship's biscuits are what enabled colonization. Otherwise the sailors would have died on such a long journey. There's ship's biscuits in museums today from the 1830s and you could still eat them. Biscuits have

been away twice baked to preserve wheat so that it never goes off. But what I find really interesting with the history of biscuits, it's when the Protestants start to get involved. Like the whole point of Catholicism, the whole, the main thing about Catholicism is this communion wafer is actual Christ. That's what we believe in we're catholics when this fucking communion wafer is blessed when this biscuit is blessed it turns into a 2 000 year old carpenter from the iron age a miracle occurs and you have to believe this this miracle is called transubstantiation. You gotta believe this and if you believe that

you're a Catholic. Then the mid 1500s the Protestants come along and the Protestants say fuck that you're talking out of your arse. What do you mean it's a fucking man? What do you mean you're actually eating Christ you lunatics? Are you cannibals. We protest that. We're Protestants. This isn't the body of Christ. It's just a fucking biscuit, you stupid bastards. It's a symbol. That's all it is. It's a symbol. It's not an actual man. Now that's the difference between Catholics and Protestants right there. That's a gross oversimplification. That's not the only reason that Protestantism came about. Protestants were mainly protesting abuse of power and corruption within the church. But if you had to give the simplest

answer possible, Catholics believe that communion wafer is an actual man and Protestants believe it's just a symbol. It's just a biscuit. But what you see from this in biscuit history, and this is what I find really, really interesting, Protestants become kind of obsessed with biscuits. They become obsessed with baking. Now, before I get into the history of this, something I find fascinating. There's an urban myth in the north of Ireland, okay?

I don't know how true it is, but it's an urban myth that in the north of Ireland you can tell a Protestant because they put their toaster in the cupboard so Protestant people in the north for some reason they put their toasters in the cupboard they hide their toasters away when they're not being used now I've thought thought about that. If you're a true Protestant and you completely reject that the bread turns into a man when it's blessed

that's going to leave you with a bit of anxiety about toasters. You see, because what does a toaster do? A toaster takes bread and transforms it into toast. It changes the nature of bread into something else. I think that's why Protestants put toasters in the cupboard. Toasters are inherently Catholic

because they take bread and transform it into something else. So I think Protestants are just a bit freaked out by it. So they make their toast and then they're like, get it the fuck away, put it in the cupboard. I don't want to think about it. Let's go back to biscuit history. the 1800s different protestants in America and in Europe and in Britain different protestants start to really investigate biscuits as a medicinal product and I find it fascinating it's as if they're trying to actually do something useful with communions.

Like those crazy Catholics over there think that their bread is actual Christ when it's clearly not. Well, maybe we can get biscuits, the host. Maybe we can get biscuits and scientifically make them into something beneficial. So, for instance, you've got a fadda called Sylvester Graham. Right, he was an American Presbyterian minister. So a Protestant minister. He invented a type of biscuit called a graham cracker. Whole wheat flour and water baked like a biscuit.

Twice baked. It's a biscuit. They call it a cracker, but the graham cracker is a biscuit. Sylvester Graham, in the 1800s, the Protestant minister, he invented graham crackers to stop people wanking. I'm dead serious. He wanted to create an unleavened, pure type of communion wafer, you could call it, even though it wasn't a sacrament he was chasing

this pure clean bread that when you put it into your system into your stomach you won't want to wank anymore you've also john harvey kellogg inventing cornflakes as a way to stop people wanking too but dead serious the graham cracker, which is the American digestive biscuit, was invented to stop people masturbating by Protestants. They're trying to do something useful with communion wafers. The Catholics are promising the sun, moon and stars, you're actually eating God. The Protestants are going, don't be ridiculous, but we can make you stop wanking. And then you go over to Scotland in the late 1800s. And you have the Protestants making biscuits over there as well.

In the Victorian times, people believed that a lot of ills in the body, whether it be mental illness, anxiety, pain, people believed that a lot of this originated in the stomach and what you ate. So a lot of different biscuits were invented by Protestants to improve digestive health. Like you had the Abernathy biscuit which is a Scottish biscuit from the early 1800s but this is where the digestive biscuit steps in. A fella called Alexander Grant in Scotland was developing the first digestive biscuits. He was looking for biscuits that stopped people farting.

That's what digestive biscuits were invented for, to stop people farting. And the reason they were called digestive biscuits is because they had a little bit of bread soda in them. So it was believed if you ate these biscuits the bread soda would settle your stomach and then you wouldn't be farting. So you've got graham crackers which are basically digestive, slightly different in America to stop people wanking. And then you've got digestive biscuits in Scotland to stop people farting. Wanking and farting both seen as terrible sins

by the Protestants. Things that need to be eradicated from the body through good digestive health. So that's where digestive biscuits come from. From the McVitie's company in Scotland. And that's why they're called digestives. They're Protestant communion wafers that stop you committing the sin of farting. I opened this podcast by speaking about a moment of synchronicity for me. So I was in this hotel in Roscommon eating a digestive biscuit and then I rolled the little grain of digestive in my palm and it reminded me of, oh I remember the first boob you ever felt and then that sent me down a digestive biscuit rabbit hole on the internet for the evening so there's definite strange kind of sectarian thread of protestant versus catholic

theme emerging in the history of biscuits that i'm identifying something strange that i've heard that i've never understood the answer to is so in the 1980s and the 1990s, in the period known as the Troubles in the north of Ireland, the IRA started to develop like homemade rocket launchers, armour-piercing rocket launchers. Colonel Gaddafi in Libya had given the IRA a lot of semtex, and the IRA were making their own rockets and firing them at British armoured tanks and blowing them up and firing them at British helicopters

and taking them down out of the air. And there was even a martyr attack I believe on Downing Street in the early 90s. But what the British Army found, whenever the British Army up north, when one of their armoured personnel carriers was blown up, or whenever a helicopter was shot from the sky by one of these homemade rocket launchers, when the British Army would go to where the IRA shot the rocket from, they used to keep finding loads of digestive biscuits. Not like wrappers of digestive biscuits, but like the Cookie Monster. Like the Cookie Monster had literally gone to a packet of digestive biscuits and eaten them really quickly. Every time the IRA fired a

rocket, the British soldiers were like, what the fuck are they doing? did the RA open up a packet of digestive biscuits and eat them like the cookie monster every time they fire a rocket? what the fuck is going on here? they were thinking is this a joke? is this some type of symbol we don't understand? what's with the fucking digestive biscuits every time you blow up a tank? and for ages they couldn't understand why so on Monday, this Monday, March the 18th fucking digestive biscuits every time you blow up a tank. And for ages they couldn't understand why.

So on Monday, this Monday, March the 18th, a woman died by the name of Rose Dugdale. Rose Dugdale was a unique character. She was English. She was a Protestant. She was like incredibly posh. I mean proper posh English. Landed gentry. Her da was an underwriter for Lloyd's Bank.

Lived on a great estate. Proper, proper English posh. She was a debutante. But Rose Dugdale hated that she came from a posh English family and she hated colonialism and she hated capitalism and when she was like 20 she became like a radical left revolutionary. Rose Dugdale when she got her inheritance which was a lot of money like a quarter of a million quid in the 70s

she literally just gave it all away to the poor people of north london and became a left-wing revolutionary eventually she goes over to the north of ireland and joins the ira this really posh english protestant from landed money joins the ira and mean heavily involved. Like literally she joined an active service unit, hijacked a helicopter, flew the helicopter over RUC stations and dropped homemade bombs made out of milk churns on the RUC stations in a helicopter she robbed. So if the IRA were thinking this posh English one might be a double agent or MI5 it's like no no she's after robbing a helicopter and now she's dropping bombs

on RUC stations like the first ever bombs dropped on British forces since World War II. Then in 1974 she was part of an IRA raid where they stole a lot of Vermeer paintings, a lot of really, really expensive paintings from Rosborough House in Wicklow to raise money for the IRA. So this was an incredibly politically radical, serious person. And she died the other day in her 80s. And some of the obituaries are weird they're a bit misogynistic they still treat her as the eccentric daughter of a millionaire or someone who was troublesome

instead of going like whether you agree with her tactics or not instead of going no this is a serious radical person who made very strong political decisions and stuck with them until her death again I'm not condoning the provisional IRA or anything like that I'm just saying this person was serious. She's more than just a troubled teen who was trying to piss off her millionaire dad.

So Rose Dugdale was imprisoned for being a member of the IRA and for stealing the Vermeer paintings from Wicklow. She did about nine years in prison and then when she came out of prison she became like an expert IRA bomb maker. She became part of the IRA team that designs bombs and weapons for the IRA.

Rose Dugdale built and designed the IRA's homemade rocket launcher. These rockets that they were making out of Colonel Gaddafi's Semtex. Rose Dugdale designed these homemade rocket launchers. Now think of it, think of a rocket launcher. It's a thing you put up on your shoulder, a disposable thing. The rocket comes out the front and then there's recoil at the back. So what the IRA found when they were making these prototype homemade rocket launchers is the recoil at the back was too much. The rocket

would fire out the front but then at the back there was too much of a kickback from the shock and they couldn't get accuracy when they were firing the rockets. So Rose Dugdale tried many different methods but she eventually figured out if you put a packet of digestive biscuits at the back of the rocket launcher, it will absorb the shock and allow the rocket to be fired accurately. So all the IRA rocket launchers in the 80s and the 90s that Rose Dugdale designed, they shot a rocket out the front, but then spat digestive biscuits out the back like the cookie monster had just eaten them. So this rich aristocratic English Protestant is the reason why British

soldiers would find chewed up digestive biscuits any time the IRA launched a rocket. And I learned that the other day when I just saw Rose Dugdale had died. I'd never heard of her. I went researching her while taking a break from my pre-existing digestive biscuit research. I end up researching fucking Rose Dugdale and there it is. She put fucking digestives in rocket launchers. What a bizarre coincidence. What a strange bit of synchronicity. So let's have a little pause now. I'm in my office, as you can tell by the superior warm sound that I have in here.

I don't have an ocarina, but I do have a delicious bottle of lemon Turkish aftershave, which I'm going to spray, and you're going to hear an advert for something. Here we go. Lemony. Do you have an outdated bathtub with flimsy shower curtains and mold buildup? It may be time for an upgrade. Introducing Belka Glass, Toronto's custom glass shower experts. We offer

a range of options from full enclosures to steam sauna showers. Enjoy the elegance of a custom glass shower for a low affordable price. Visit belkaglass.ca slash pod for an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. That's B-E-L-K-A glass.ca slash pod. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you.

No, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real lemon to be honest now I'm after getting it on the mic. It's a very powerful Turkish lemon lemon if you could smell that

you'd get tears in your eyes it's in my mouth now I'm inundated with the stench of lemon that's too much support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page patreon.com

forward slash the blind buy podcast this podcast is my full my full-time job this after fucking my shit up with this lemon man this podcast is my full-time job this is how i earn a living so i rent out my office so i my bills. It's how I exist as an artist. It's why there's a podcast each week. So that I have the time and space to research and to fail. Because failure is the most important part of the creative process.

So if you enjoy this podcast that I make, if it brings you mirth, merriment, fascination, enjoyment, whatever the fuck it brings you, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month, that's it. If you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free.

Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. And also, if you do go to my Patreon, there's an option there to sign up for free. The Patreon I've introduced recently. Please don't bother doing that. If you're signing up to my Patreon,

please only do it if you intend to pay actual money. The signing up for free thing, it doesn't benefit me in any way. I think it just allows Patreon to get your data. There's no benefit to me at all to sign up for free. And also, I don't even post on Patreon. I don't put anything on there. It's just a platform for you to financially support the podcast. The reason I don't put anything on Patreon is that I want everybody to get the exact same experience whether they pay or not.

I'd rather not have exclusive content that's only available to people who pay. Also, Patreon, it means I'm not beholden to advertisers. Anyone who advertises on this podcast has to do so on my terms and I can turn advertisers down. The second advertisers can dictate the content of anything. That's when creativity gets destroyed. I want to turn up each week. I want to turn up each week.

I want to turn up each week and genuinely make the podcast that I'm passionate about. This week I'm passionate about digestive biscuits on the inside of a bra. Have you any idea how quickly that would be shot down if I brought that to a TV station, a radio station? Even the simple plot of this week's episode. I touched a boob when I was 15 and that's why the IRA had digestive biscuits in their rocket launcher. Not a hope they wouldn't invest in seeing that idea to the end. Do you think fucking

McVitie's biscuits would sponsor this? I just gave the cunts a free ad. Big long ad for McVitie's. That's what this was. Do you think they'd sponsor this? Guarantee you one of ye's gonna go out and buy a packet of digestive biscuits because of this podcast. McVitie's don't want ye finding out that they were invented as a Protestant fart pill. Fuck McVitie's. Buy off-brand digestive biscuits. All right, just let's, let's plug a couple of gigs, all right? Um, my big UK tour, my tour of England, Scotland and Wales, right? In April, 21st of April, Newcastle, Tyne Theatre, almost sold out. Glasgow on the 23rd, sold out. Nottingham, almost sold out. Cardiff on the 27th, in the Wales Millennium Centre.

I have an unbelievable guest for that Cardiff gig. I don't want to tell you who it is. an unbelievable guest for that Cardiff gig. I don't want to tell you who it is. I have a class guest for that gig who I can't wait to speak to. Come along to that. Brighton on the 28th, almost sold out. Cambridge. Cambridge is the one place where it's not selling out as fast. Bristol on the 30th, sold out. And and then London the 1st of May my biggest ever live podcast that I've ever done still pinching myself

at the fucking Hammersmith Apollo London on the 1st of May come along to that because that's going to be crack and what have I got the 18th of June Vicar Street in Dublin nice little Dublin summer gig come along to that

then 7th of July isn't it the 18th and 19th of July the June, Vicar Street in Dublin, nice little Dublin summer gig, come along to that, then 7th of July isn't it, the 18th and 19th of July I believe, yes, I'm in the set theatre Kilkenny, haven't been in Kilkenny in a long time, and then in August, Letterkenny, I know this is ages away but the promoter is real anxious that I plug this gig. I'm in Letterkenny up in Donegal at Summer Sessions on the 18th of August. I'm an incredibly fatigued man. It's 3am here where I'm recording this because I was filming all day. I'm filming all this month. I'm making a TV documentary. I can't give you details yet but I'm very excited about it. I'm making a TV documentary. So if you know TV, TV is very very very long hours.

Up at six in the morning, finished filming at about 8pm at night. So that's me all this month. So I'm gonna go to bed and I'm gonna sleep for two hours and then I'm going to get up and do some filming. It's not work. It's not work when it's something I'm passionate about. I don't experience it as work. And if I didn't have to sleep, I wouldn't. I would happily go 24 hours a day, nonstop. If, if the thing I'm doing is something I'm passionate about. Sleep is something that gets in the way of my passions. So I'll see you next week. Currently in my office where I am, someone appears to be urinating into house plants in the corridors. And I think they think it's me because I work such long hours and I'm the only person here at like 3am. So we're going to have to see how that pans out. I'm not urinating into

houseplants. I wouldn't do that. Especially in a shared space. The only way I'd maybe if I had a houseplant that was mine in a private space and it required some nutrients that are only found in human piss

then I'd piss into a houseplant. But outside of that, it doesn't interest me. Alright, I'll catch you next week. In the meantime, rub a dog, wink at a pigeon, tickle a snail.

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