The Blindboy Podcast - Appointive Plane

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Guinness. I speak about the cultural significance of a pint of Guinness in the Irish Psyche Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Let's begin this week's episode by reading out a poem that was sent to us by Hollywood actor Pierce Brosnan. I dreamt I played Assassin's Creed and it was set in Leitrim. I leap from the Leitrim steeple. I leap from the Leitrim steeple. I kill my enemies one by one. I am the assassin. If you have ever hurt me or done me wrong, I will kill you. I leap from the Leitrim steeple. I leap from the Leitrim steeple. So that was sent in by Pierce Brosnan. It doesn't have a title. Pierce Brosnan who's actually from Drogheda. You know, you wouldn't think Pierce Brosnan is Irish.

You'd think... He's one of these lads I'd describe as mid-Atlantic. You know? Mid-Atlantic. Whatever the fuck that means. You know, you hear about who'd be mid-Atlantic. Pierce Brosnan is mid-Atlantic. Daniel Day-Lewis is mid-Atlantic. Pierce Brosnan is mid-Atlantic. Daniel Day-Lewis

is mid-Atlantic. Kinda Gabriel Byrne. Almost Gabriel Byrne. Gabriel Byrne is just there off the coast of the Aran Islands. But some of these actors are mid-Atlantic. Pierce Brosnan is your archetypal mid-Atlantic actor.

It's like he's Irish but there's there's something else there and you don't know what it is because it's not American and it's not English it's mid-Atlantic

but there's nothing in the middle of the Atlantic there's nothing there it's just a load of fucking ocean so what does that mean? is Pierce Brosnan from the middle of the ocean the middle of the Atlantic

is that what that means? this week's episode is sponsored by Pierce Brosnan remember when he was James Bond? remember when Pierce Brosnan was James Bond? should God help him, I suppose he had to adopt that mid-Atlantic accent

like, if you've, like a Drogheda accent is a very, very strange accent very odd accent. Very odd accent. I couldn't even begin to do an impression of the Drahada accent because it's just so different to a Limerick accent. Drahada accent, it sounds like someone who is perpetually drinking a glass of water. That's what it sounds like.

It's like they're always drinking a glass of water and talking at the same time. That's what the Drahada accent is. Fuck it, I have a glass of water here that I keep so that my mouth doesn't get dry. Let's give it a go. I'm gonna try and talk with my mouth full of water and let's see if my thesis is correct

that the Drahada accent sounds like somebody drinking water. London. My name is Pierce Brandon. I was in Gordon. I'm James Bond. I shoot you with my gun. I'm a spy.

I'm James Bond. I'm Pierce Brandon. Not far off. Not far off the actual Drogheda accents that's what that's how Pierce Brosnan should sound actually I got in shit for this before Pierce Brosnan

he's from okay he was born in Drogheda but he was raised in Navan so now the Navan and Drogheda accents are similar but not the same so there's a big fight that goes on between Drahada people and Navan people over who gets to own Pierce Brosnan

but you know what lads nobody fucking owns Pierce Brosnan because he's mid-Atlantic he belongs to a school of sperm whales off the coast of Greenland so that's nearly four minutes there of Pierce Brosnan content

and seeing as he's sponsoring this week's episode I think four minutes of Pierce Brosnan content is what he deserves this is not sponsored by Pierce Brosnan lads that was a fib if you're a brand new listener to this podcast

go back and listen to some earlier episodes. Especially if you've been directed to this podcast because you want to hear some of my mental health episodes. Alright, and you're wondering why the fuck is this cunt talking about Pierce Brosnan for four minutes. So go back and listen to some earlier episodes, that's what I always say to brand new listeners. Familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. always say to brand new listeners familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast to regular listeners the henpecked declans the perpetual jennifers you're very welcome you're very welcome so what i'd like to do for this what i'd like to do this week is two weeks ago i did a podcast which was very well received by, it was the podcast about chicken fillet rolls,

where I spoke about chicken fillet rolls, the iconography of them, the history of them, and what they mean to Irish culture. And I started off sceptically, saying, fuck that, I'm not doing a chicken fillet roll podcast, but I did it and I enjoyed it.

And it got really good feedback, and I liked doing it and I stepped out of my comfort zone and since then I've had numerous requests from ye to do similar podcasts as in to just take it the requests have been I liked your Chicken Phillip podcast take something else from Irish culture just a thing and speak about it and give us a hot take obviously people have been requesting teenage discos and links Africa

those are two very popular subjects I don't have enough in both of those to do an entire hot take alright but another big request that I got the past two weeks people asking me to talk about Guinness okay which again I was reluctant going Guinness what can

I say about Guinness but then I got a during the week I got contacted for to contribute to an article there's a journalist called paulie dial and paulie he writes he writes really interesting articles about irish meme culture he's like the only mainstream journalist that documents irish memes and meme culture which i think is really really important he often publishes in magazines like vice and Paulie often gets on to me to contribute to articles about Irish meme culture and last week he said to me I'm doing an article about Guinness about what what does what does Guinness mean today and I gave him like I wrote like a paragraph

and as I was writing the paragraph I was going oh fuck I do have quite a lot of hot takes and opinions on Guinness so I'm gonna do a Guinness podcast this is not sponsored by Guinness

in any way I mean it's one of those ones this isn't really about Guinness as a drink or a brand I want to explore Guinness the icon of Guinness and not necessarily

Guinness the icon of the glass of porter the pint glass of porter with the chicken fillet roll podcast it wasn't about a chicken fillet roll it's here's what excites me i couldn't have done an hour-long podcast about sausage rolls just couldn't have done it sausage rolls are delicious they're fantastic you buy them in the same place that you buy a chicken fillet roll

but they have no cultural significance and by which i mean something that is is both a food stuff and when you bring it up with another human being it's a conversation starter if i say sausage roll and then that begins a conversation and carries with it loads of emotions and ideas then it's not just a food stuff it's iconic and it's of cultural significance it's a unit of culture i don't think sausage rolls have that not like chicken fillet rolls do not like breakfast rolls did they have a little bit of cultural significance there's a little bit of meme quality to a sausage roll mainly they're marketed very aggressively um when you go to a deli counter in ireland in a petrol station you're not allowed by one sausage

roll you're just not allowed can i have one sausage roll for 50p? Are you sure you don't want four for a euro? No, I just have the one for 50p. They're four for a euro. Four for a... Okay, I'll have four for a fucking euro. That's as far as I can take it with sausage rolls. They're... They're the only kind of non-consensual deli item

at the petrol station. You'll always walk out with four sausage rolls and you'll eat one and you'll give three to a crow and that's an irish an irish modern tradition but i can't do 90 minutes on that that's as far as it goes now i could do a podcast on petrol station crows because our rooks and ravens because is a, that's an interesting phenomenon there, and it's something I should have touched on with the chicken fillet roll, you know, in my lifetime, I have seen crows change in their appearance and behaviour, because Irish people have started treating petrol stations as restaurants, I've seen this happen, and crows as well you know they have

historical significance within irish culture you think of the morrigan which is an an ancient mythical irish crow going back like 4 000 years crows represent kind of prophecy or war or fate within irish culture and now they're just now they just eat sausage rolls at petrol stations like we do like because Ireland's are as I explained in the chicken fillet roll episode Ireland doesn't have a food culture

we don't have a historical food culture so our closest thing to a food culture is eating this food out of petrol stations you do tend to see a lot of crows rooks and ravens very very well fed birds hanging around petrol stations and walking around the forecourts like they own cars you know that's the interesting thing about these birds like they're very very because we eat fried food and like wedges and sausage rolls and jam buns and chicken fillet rolls from petrol stations and a lot of

people eat them in the in the petrol station forecourt in their car or beside the bins we tend to just throw our food at the crows that's the thing you do crows rooks and ravens very large black birds very intelligent animals i have a lot of time for crows i have a lot of time for crows there's a there's a compassion to them there's an intelligence i have a lot of respect and a lot of time for crows but the ones that walk around the petrol stations have nearly... They bicker. They do bicker a lot with each other. And you can see a hierarchy among them when it comes to who gets the sausage roll. But they kind of...

Because their sole source of food now is us Irish people eating deli food around bins and outside of cars. They've kind of stopped flying a bit and yeah they walk around the forecourt as if they themselves have got cars or as if they themselves are interested in petrol and i often wonder like like sometimes i think like the first animal in space was a dog right a dog called Laika and the Russians the Russians before they sent humans into space

they sent this dog a dog in a fucking space costume and they fucked it up into space they sent it up into space in a rocket and I always think like what if what if what if they shot the dog into space right and humans

hadn't been to the moon so humans don't know like are there fucking aliens up there we don't know I don't even know if satellites have been up there yet so they fucked the dog into space what happens if an alien catches the spaceship

and then the aliens are like oh this must What happens if an alien. Catches the spaceship. And then the aliens are like. Oh. This must be. This must be one of the creatures. That's down in that planet Earth below. Alright let's go say hello. And they open up the capsule.

And it's a fucking dog in a space suit. And then they go. Alright okay he must have built this. fuck me he's not one for talking is he Jesus Christ fuck me and he built this spaceship and he doesn't even have hands

and they're there looking at the dog's paws wondering how the dog was able to build such a complicated electronics and he's panting and licking you know so if the aliens found that dog they'd just go all right here's the intelligent life we can't fuck this but like if aliens now were like concerned about us and concerned about our like our fossil fuel consumption because if i was an alien a really really smart alien, I'd be like, them

planet art men, they're using all their resources, you know, they're drinking up all that oil, we can see that the carbon is becoming a problem, we need to warn these cunts about fossil fuels. So the aliens come down, they land in Ireland, and they

go to petrol stations, because they want to warn us about fossil fuels, and then all they see is a load of fucking crows, walking around, and more crows than human, eating chicken fillet rolls, looking like they're driving cars, so the aliens are going to give the message to the crows,

they're going to walk up to a crow, and say, what's the crack Mr. Crow, I see you're here in your petrol station with all your friends we just need to warn you it's really important you gotta stop using this shit the crow just goes caw caw and the aliens fuck off and then and then and then the human walks out of the petrol station with his four sausage rolls and says to the crow what did i miss and the crow just goes nothing Nothing. Give me three sausage rolls.

So. Like. I couldn't do a full podcast. On. Sausage rolls. Because that's about the. I am happy with that theory now. Because that theory just popped into my head.

Like. For economic. Because. Sausage rolls. In petrol stations. Are marketed so aggressively. That nobody. Buys.

One. Instead we buy four. that it's not human food it's actually crow food and it is changing the behavior of crows and causing crows to stop flying and to start behaving like an overweight traveling salesman from feathered just hanging around his Opal Astra. But I could do 90 minutes on a chicken fillet roll. Because it's not just a piece of food. As I explained. It has all this cultural baggage. It has value as a meme.

The chicken fillet roll says something about our sense of identity. And the pint of Guinness does the same thing so what I'd like to interrogate for this week's episode what I want to establish a thesis around as such is what is the pint of Guinness in 2021 what does it say about us as Irish people what does it say about Irish identity and what makes Guinness are just porter and stout in general what makes this significant is with chicken fillet rolls like they just chicken fillet rolls just have they have cultural significance in the past 10 years and that's it and they didn't exist beforehand

but guinness has existed for a long time so guinness has always had cultural significance as an icon okay not just something you drink but something you hold in your hand and it says something about you and you're you're trying to communicate something about yourself with it and also the pint of Guinness holds a cultural value that we would like to have a little piece of you know when when you have your pint of Guinness in your hand it's not just a delicious drink you're trying to say something about yourself you're trying to be part of a community it stops being a drink like the chicken filler roll stops being a sandwich the pint of guinness it is both a drink and something else and i want to figure out what

that something else is right now in 2021 and also kind of what that something else and i want to figure out what that something else is right now in 2021 and also kind of what that something else was to our parents and our grandparents so guinness pints of guinness like i mentioned they've always been present in irish culture right going back 250 300 years recently the current guinness discourse and what has shifted the meaning of guinness to the current generation of young people i think is an instagram page and this is why i'm getting asked so many questions as well this is why people were saying to me blind by can you do a hot take on guinness or why last week i was asked to contribute to an article about the significance of significance of guinness the reason it's happening is because of an instagram

page that was started about a year ago and the instagram page is called shit london guinness it's got over a hundred thousand followers it started by an irish lad living in London and all the Instagram page is is it's terrible pints of Guinness in pubs all around London Guinness served in a Foster's glass Guinness served in a Heineken glass Guinness served in like one of those weird Italian beer glassesrible looking pints of Guinness. And it has tons of followers. And it creates huge discussion. Amongst Irish people. And if you look at the comments. You know you'd have.

A terrible pint of Guinness. In a Heineken glass. And it looks disgusting. And then all the comments underneath. They're very performative. And I don't mean performative. In a negative way i mean people will comment under the terrible pint and say oh what a crime against humanity and they'll

tag their friends and it's like a performed irishness it's fun we're not offended that the guinness is poured terribly we're pretend offended we're performing our offense as a way to have fun and to bond so shit london guinness and its sister page beautiful pints which is an instagram page full of beautifully poured pints of guinness shit london guinness has now created a new discourse around pints of guinness and a new kind of rallying for identity so I want to get to the bottom of that which I'll revisit at the end of the podcast but before I do that

let's look at Guinness historically let's look at Guinness psychologically and the Irish psyche historically that's what I'm interested in so I've got listeners from all around the world i don't think i need to explain what a pint of guinness is

simply it is it's an alcoholic drink called stout which is a type of beer which is black in color with a white head and the taste is it has a complex taste you know it it has a taste when you taste it for the first time you're gonna go oh what's that and then you begin to love it guinness has that i don't know what the name for that is Guinness has that. I don't know what the name for that is. Olives have it. Coffee has it.

Dark chocolate has it. You know. If you tasted coffee for the first time. Like if you'd never tasted coffee. If you didn't know what coffee was. And I gave you. An Americana. You'd go.

Oh my god. What's this weird. Bitter. What the fuck. And you'd hate it. And then the next day you'd be, oh my god, what's this weird, bitter, what the fuck? And you'd hate it. And then the next day you'd be thinking about it, and you'd want to go back and sip again and go, I want to taste that horrible thing. And by day three, you love coffee.

Same with olives. Black olives in particular. It just has a complex, intriguing taste. And there's no middle ground with Guinness. You either love it or fucking hate it. But most people acquire a taste until they really, really love it. And it's made in Ireland. And it's an Irish drink. And it's Irish stout.

And it's our national drink. And in the absence of a food culture, as I explained in the previous episode, we do not have a food culture. We have a drink culture. The pint of Guinness is the closest thing that we really have to a fucking food culture. You know, if French people have got their cheese, Spanish people have got their cured meats. You know, we've got our fucking Guinness. We have our Guinness. That's ours.

It's our tradition. We have strong opinions about it. It's truly ours. It's our identity. And not only is it part of our identity. It's our identity internationally. You think of St. Patrick's Day. What comes to mind?

Green hats. Don't know what the fuck that's about. Leprechauns. We don't give a fuck about leprechauns. Alright this is all American shit. Pints of Guinness. That's the shit that we're still doing. So when you think of Paddy's Day.

Pints of Guinness. Everyone around the world knows the Irish Bar. Go to the Irish Bar. Have a pint of Guinness. Come to Dublin. Drink of Guinness come to Dublin drink a Guinness in Temple Bar it's there's many factors to the pint of Guinness

so let's when I'm trying to understand something I always use the alien metaphor like I did earlier if aliens found the crows in the petrol station what would they say? Well if aliens.

If I'm trying to understand Guinness. Which is difficult to understand. Because I'm so close to it. I've grown up with Guinness. Guinness is so ubiquitous. To Irishness. You don't really give it any critical thought. It's just there all the time.

So you don't really give it critical thought. So when just there all the time so you don't really give a critical thought so when i want to give something critical thought i think what would an alien think i think one thing i find interesting is if an alien arrived in ireland in the 1910s, in the 1920s, in the 1800s. And he saw all these Irish people drinking pints of Guinness. And if that alien was to say to themselves, what's the crack here with Ireland? Wow, there's an awful lot of priests. Fuck me, the Catholic Church is incredibly powerful here in this country. And what do the people do alright ok so they're very Catholic and they

go to mass every Sunday and then what does the man at mass say oh the man at mass says that wine is blood so they involve themselves in some type of strange cannibal ritual where the priest man tells the Irish people to drink the blood of this other man and there's this strange drinking and cannibal ritual where the priest man tells the Irish people to drink the blood of

this other man and there's this strange drinking and cannibalism thing going on and then when you go to the pub they seem to drink little glasses of priest so that's the first thing I would say if I was an alien and I didn't know anything I'd say isn't it strange that these Irish people who listen to all these priests who have black shirts with white collars, that when these Irish people go to enjoy themselves away from the priests,

they drink drinks that look exactly like priests? Okay, I find that interesting. You might be thinking, Jesus Christ, Blind Boy, you're overthinking it. But if I was an alien I'd simply go why is this historically deeply catholic country that's run by priests why is their idea of fun to drink a drink that looks exactly like a priest a pint of Guinness looks like a priest okay black shirt white collar that's what a pint of Guininness looks like it looks like a priest

and then the priests tell us to drink blood and eat christ so we already have a culture of very strange ritualistic cannibalism and now we're also drinking priests so i find that interesting what I also find really interesting is so the Guinness company they started making Guinness in 1759 now this is just me with some mad hot takes

I'm just doing some mad hot takes if I was an alien what would I be saying what things do I find interesting I just find it interesting. That in 1759. In Ireland. At that time there were. The penal laws.

And what were the penal laws? The penal laws were. For about a hundred fucking years. From the 1600s up until. The 1790s. There were these laws. in Ireland that were specifically against Catholics okay the British ruled Ireland and the penal laws were very oppressive um a Catholic couldn't marry a Protestant. Catholics were forbidden from public offices, so they couldn't have jobs that were important.

Catholics were forbidden from access and education. Catholics were forbidden from holding a firearm. You couldn't have a gun to defend yourself. Catholics couldn't inherit land from Protestants. How a Catholic passed land if a Catholic did have land how they passed that on to their offspring was

I could go on and on systemic oppression into the law was written incredibly deeply oppressive laws against Irish Catholics right from the 1600s up until the 1790s and what it basically did is it it disenfranchised the irish catholic population it created a

catholic population that lived in some of the worst poverty that's in Europe at the time it created a generation of Catholics no access to education no access to language forbidden from practicing their religion people who couldn't read or write people who weren't allowed to speak their native tongue extreme, extreme oppression

which then laid the groundwork for the famine and I just find it interesting that now another another important thing about this is when you disenfranchise an entire population like that over the course of generations right and you deny people access to any type of upward mobility and create extreme poverty and deprivation, that also creates a culture in which addiction thrives. Alcoholism and Ireland, that's not a myth. We have had serious problems with drink going back hundreds of years

and it's no surprise that why wouldn't you have a culture of abuse of alcohol when you have that much disenfranchisement in the population so I just find it interesting the hot take conspiracy theorist in me is like during the penal laws you have this dirt poor population and then they're now drinking these drinks that look like priests but who's making the drinks

ah this brewery called Guinness ok and Guinness which was founded in 1759 at the height of the penal laws were were a very, very Protestant company. Guinness was a straight up Protestant fucking company. Arthur Guinness, the founder of the company, was a Protestant unionist who descended from a Protestant fucking family.

He was a coloniser of Ireland. from a Protestant fucking family he was a coloniser of Ireland so also the Guinness only employed Protestants they did not employ Catholics they were a very anti-Catholic

company right up until fucking the 1930s lads alright up until 1939 right now this is the Irish the Brits are gone at this point up until 1939 right now this is the irish the brits are gone at this point up until 1939 if a protestant guinness worker wanted to marry a catholic he had to resign from the company so like during the 1916 rising when the irish rebels were occupying the gpo to try and get independence uh guinness donated a lot of lorries to the british army so they could turn them into makeshift tanks in in

1913 um lord ivy who i think was like a great grandson of arthur guinness lord ivy was like again part of the guinness family that that controlled Guinness in 1913 he gave a hundred thousand pounds to the UVF in 1913 in 1980 Guinness Guinness seriously considered completely rebranding as an English drink and disassociating itself from Irishness completely because Guinness felt that Irishness meant the IRA so Guinness were like we can't be looking like a drink for paddies in their mind in 1980 to the Guinness Corporation Irishness meant terrorism and they were like let's get the fuck away from that and pretend now that we're an

English drink and that was a serious plan that they had and they didn't go ahead with it they didn't go ahead with it probably because of the strength of Paddy's day so these people did not like the plain people of Ireland they did not they were they were supremacists they were unionists supremacists who would have heavily identified as British. Guinness has always been anti-Catholic, anti-Irish independence. This drink that we think of as being the Paddy's drink, the people making it were not Paddy's. Anti-Catholic Irishness is in the very fibre of the history of the Guinness Company. is in the very fibre of the history of the Guinness Company.

And this is a company set up by a Protestant unionist at the height of the penal laws. Actual systemic oppression designed to eradicate the Irish Catholic population, let's be honest. So I just find that... Why am I saying it? I find it really interesting. It's really fucking interesting. I'm not trying to be all woke. I'm not trying to be woke and say, let's be honest so i just find that why am i saying it i find it really interesting it's really fucking interesting i'm not trying to be all woke i'm not trying to be woke and say

oh lads don't drink guinness it's the drink of the oppressor i'm not saying that at all 2021 what i'm saying is that it is it is a fact that the guinness company was unionist explicitly anti-catholic selling an intoxicating substance to a mostly catholic population whose alcoholism was as a result of collective trauma so that to me seems a little bit there's a cynicism there that's cynical and the drinks look like priests that's cynical to me and very interesting am i saying don't drink guinness absolutely not guinness is delicious drink away and if you if you're thinking like that's a bit too far blind boy that sounds like a conspiracy theory look at what the british did in in china in the 1800s the british flooded china with opium specifically as a way to dominate and control they did it they did it in china look at look at the the way that the u.s the reagan administration and the nixon administration

in the u.s look at what they did to the african-american community um in america they at the same time that crack cocaine was flooding african-american communities they highly criminalized it so that they could lock up uh mainly black people for possessing small amounts of crack and they also this was all happening at the same time that they were withdrawing funding from like education, healthcare, effectively destroying and disenfranchising the community and then creating the community conditions for addiction to be endemic. So it's not too far-fetched, lads.

You know, it's not too far-fetched. The penal laws were a thing that's not conspiracy and penal laws deny people education the right to vote the right to own land the right to have any hope you're creating a situation whereby an addiction will be endemic and now you have members of the protestant ascendancy very wealthy Protestant unionists, selling people the drink that is feeding that addiction. So I don't think that's too far-fetched to take at all. And sometimes I get a lot of people saying to me, Blind Bike, you're always blaming the Brits. Why don't you shut up about this anti-British stuff? Shut up about it. People need to move on.

You're going to stir things up. And what I say to people like that, all I'm doing is I'm taking a decolonial view of history. We were colonised, so I'm working my way backwards to look at the actual colonisation. The penal laws was actual colonisation. And this fear, the fear of don't talk about our history don't talk about the history because it's too uncomfortable and and it makes the the british

empire look bad and then irish people will get really angry we need to move on that view is a colonial view that means you're serf minded all right this view of irish people don't look at your history of oppression because if you do you will become uncontrollably angry and hateful towards the british that's a colonial view. That denies us intelligence, criticality, agency. Who the fuck wants us to think that? That's the old classic cartoon of the Irish as this aggressive dynamite monkey. It's basically saying don't pick up a book, don't read. Don't read and pick up a book and learn about your history because it will unleash the animalistic anger within you that's a colonial view i don't take that view at all i am an intelligent compassionate person and i'm capable of learning about and reading about my history

and learning about the evils of the british empire while at the same time loving English people, Scottish people, Welsh people as my fellow human beings and not holding them responsible for the actions of their great great great grandparents. I'm an intelligent compassionate person and I can do that and you should do it as well and there's nothing wrong with looking at our history from a decolonial perspective have some confidence in yourself as an irish person don't don't uh don't buy into the lie that we're violent and stupid so regarding guinness the beautiful pint that we all enjoy if its roots if its roots are from this anti-Catholic, Protestant descendancy, unionist company

who did not like Catholics, even though they were selling us drink, if that's where it begins, then how did that become our national drink? How is that synonymous with St. Patrick's Day? How is that the most Irish thing possible? Well, I'd like to talk about how psychologically we reclaimed it. We reclaimed the pint of Guinness and made the pint of Guinness our own. And we made it us and we saw ourselves in the pint of Guinness and we made the pint of Guinness

like us so I'd like to explore a bit of that now after the Ocarina Paws okay, because I got a little hot take about the Irish psyche and the pint of Guinness so here's the Ocarina Paws

you're going to hear an advert I don't know what the advert will be for the adverts are algorithmically generated so everyone gets a different advert i don't think guinness advert ties on my podcast i don't i don't think they do um here we go On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil.

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when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com so that was the ocarina pause so that you didn't suddenly get startled by an advert because sometimes the adverts are very loud and they interfere with the podcast hug so if i play the ocarina you have a little warning um support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page i occasionally have the odd

advert on the podcast but only if only if i'm cool with them they have to play by my rules and i turn down quite a lot of. Sponsorships have gotten better for podcasts in Ireland. But I turn down quite a lot of sponsors. Because I don't want them on the podcast. Or. If an advertiser is like. We're going to advertise on your podcast.

But you must now change. Like this podcast. Talking about the history of fucking Guinness talking about the negative history of Guinness that's a lot of fucking potential sponsors lost right there but fuck them who gives a shit because

if you want to come and advertise in this podcast you can play by the rules other than that it doesn't matter because this is a listener funded podcast this podcast is funded by you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast what does this do it gives me full editorial control to make a podcast about whatever i want whatever tone i want no one tells me what to do complete freedom making podcasts for ye based on what ye want it's also a huge amount of work this is my full-time

job it's my sole source of income I fucking adore doing it I love it when you become a patron you're paying me for the work i'm doing to make this podcast and you're paying for me to to be an artist to have that as my my full-time job to be an artist because you can't make money as an artist anymore but when you have patrons you can so that's it basically if you're enjoying this podcast and you're liking it, consider becoming a patron. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it.

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and can't wait until we're back in a pub until we can actually drink a pint of Guinness where's my hot take so here's one hot take historically regarding Guinness and Irishness I view it the same way I do the English language okay so my theory there that guinness was created during the penal laws by a powerful protestant unionist family and it sold massively in conditions which allowed for alcoholism like also during the penal laws we were forced to speak english you couldn't speak gaelic you couldn't speak your native tongue this was criminalized this was punishable so we started to speak english a foreign language a tool and an instrument of oppression something that you're forced to speak something that you're forced to speak to eradicate your culture and identity but we spoke it and then we made it our own we made it the english language our own we made it into hiberno english you couldn't force

it on us you try and force english on us and we'll find our own way to speak it and then we'll say fuck you we're gonna create the greatest writers in the english language jonathan swift james joyce flannery bryan the list goes on and we reclaimed the English language, something that was forced on us, and made it our own, and empowered ourselves with it. And that's what the pint of Guinness is. I do initially view it as a tool of oppression, but we reclaimed it, we reclaimed it and made it our own. it we reclaimed it and made it our own so the pint of Guinness that you hold in your hand and you drink and that brings us together and that we can rally around as Irish identity that's not the same pint of Guinness that was sold to people 200 years ago by a company that hated its customers so how the Irish reclaimed Guinness is we wrote into that drink into that pint the pint tells a little story of our emigration the pint of Guinness

so Irish Irish people had to travel all over the world. One thing that we've always had in our culture, for as long as Guinness has been around, we've had to emigrate. We've had to leave our country, either forced and taken away, or had to leave because of things like the penal laws, the famine, or just lack of work. We've had to go to Australia. We've had to go famine or just lack of work we've had to go

to Australia we've had to go to the West Indies we've had to go to America and everywhere we went Guinness followed where you know the shitty conditions that were created at home in Ireland when we left it created a demand for Guinness and a demand for Irish pubs and one of the things about Guinness that makes it unique to we'll say just a lager or even wine or anything else you know why am I talking about what makes Guinness so special what's the iconography of it but one big thing around it is Guinness and travelling. Guinness doesn't travel well, is what we like to say. Or the Guinness doesn't taste as good there as it tastes here.

Guinness is never allowed to just be a drink. Guinness is something which is, it's at its best in Ireland. And then depending on where it travels to. It tastes different. And our goal as Irish people. Depending on what country we go to. Is to find the place with the Guinness that travels the best. The one that tastes like it does back home in Ireland. And I can't think of another drink like that.

Even with fucking wine. Wine has all its vintages and its grape and its years. But I don't associate. I'd never hear someone saying, you know, being in a restaurant in Australia and saying, can I have some French wine? Drinking it and then saying, nah, I'd be better back in France. No, you don't. It's like the wine is from France and I assume it has travelled well and even though I'm in Australia

and I'm paying a shit load of money for it I'm essentially drinking French fucking wine here and it's really good but with Guinness it's like not a fucking hope buddy what do you mean taste it it doesn't taste right we're in Sydney andney and this guinness

tastes different and you sip it and you go yeah it doesn't travel guinness doesn't travel well and there's an element of truth to it there is an element of truth to it but we also grossly over-exaggerate it we we as irish people grossly and performatively over exaggerate Guinness and traveling and how well it travels and how well it doesn't travel and the best pint of Guinness there and the best pint of Guinness here and like I said to an extent it is true my favorite type of Guinness because I don't really like Guinness for me I'm not a huge Guinness drinker I drink Guinness socially if I'm meeting people I'm having one or two pints then that pint would be a pint of Guinness right but if I'm at home having cans I like Polish

cans I'm not gonna buy cans of Guinness but if I'm to drink Guinness at home for enjoyment I drink Guinness West Indies Porter and what Guinness West Indies Porter is is it's based on a recipe from like the 1800s there's Guinness West Indies Porter and Guinness Foreign Extra or Export those are the two that I like

and basically what these Guinnesses are is when the Irish were in the West Indies why were the Irish in the West Indies? Because a bunch of Irish were sent over there as indentured servants. I've spoken about this on other podcasts.

They then became slave owners of course but there was a lot of Irish people in the West Indies. Guinness is huge in Jamaica. When the Guinness was travelling from Ireland to the West Indies, it wouldn't travel well. By the time the Guinness got to the West Indies, it wasn't right. So Guinness West Indies Porter is, they added extra hops and they added extra alcohol. So it's a very hoppy Guinness with a high percentage of alcohol it's got between six and

eight percent alcohol so that's the Guinness I like to drink when I'm at home because it has more of a kick to it I like it but that exists because Guinness didn't travel to the West Indies back in the 18th century now I'm sure it travels fine with modern technology so like that's an actual example of of guinness not traveling well where they had to create a new recipe so it would make the west indies in the fucking 1800s on ships that took six months in wooden barrels but there's also the real the performative element of guinness not traveling i'll give you an example here in limerick of Guinness not travelling.

I'll give you an example. Here in Limerick. Now, Limerick is three hours from Dublin. So we have this mythology in Limerick where we're a little bit jealous of Cork. Down in Cork, which is the southernmost part of Ireland, Cork has its own stout. Cork has got Beamish. So Beamish is stout, which is the same type of beer that Guinness is, and it's Cork has got Beamish so Beamish is stout which is the same type of beer

that Guinness is and it's Cork exclusive so Cork has it's own stout Limerick used to have it's own stout now it does now it's got Treaty City Treaty City Brewery which only opened in the past 10 years but 150 years ago

Limerick used to have it's own brewery that would make Limerick stout. And that's what people in Limerick would drink. But then Guinness built a canal. Because here's the shtick. Guinness couldn't travel on horseback from Dublin to Limerick. By the time the Guinness went on wooden barrels on the back of a horse on cobbly stones in the 18th century, by the time it got to Limerick, it was shit.

The head was gone. It was all, the bubbles were gone. You couldn't drink it. So Guinness, the fucking corporation or the company, they built a network of canals around Ireland and one of them led straight to Limerick. So now, 150 years years ago they could put the Guinness on a barge up in Dublin and it would make a really gentle journey all the way down to Limerick on a boat and when the Guinness got to Limerick it was lovely but then what did that do

it shut down Limerick's brewery so Limerick now no longer had its own porter but Cork was too far no matter what you did even when you got as far as Limerick with the Guinness by the time it got to Cork it was shit so Cork got to keep its brewery Cork had Beamish its own stout and we in Limerick have this mythology where we're jealous of fucking Cork because oh they got to keep their stout and Guinness ruined our brewery so what I think we've done as Irish people with the pint of Guinness is that we've written into it the story of our own journey of traveling okay and what I mean by that is that it's to the immigrant to the person who went to australia to the person who went to america and this is going back 200 fucking years the pint of

guinness represents the irish journey to get to that place you think of how the pint of guinness is poured you know it's it goes straight into the fucking glass and it's this stormy dark cloud not unlike the waters that someone would have been looking at when they were on a ship traveling to america or traveling to australia they look down and they see these dark waters and then in as the pint of Guinness starts rumbling in the glass and rising you know the white foam rises to the top and this reminds us of the waves the white crests of the waves in the murky black dark waters and then most importantly what you have to do with the pint of Guinness, and this is what separates porter or stout from other drinks, and in particular Guinness, you have to wait for your Guinness.

You can't just drink it straight from the tap. You've got to chill the fuck out and you have to wait. And while you're waiting and staring at your Guinness as it becomes the perfect pint, I think, because looking at a Guinness as it becomes the perfect pint I think because looking at a Guinness settling is it's a visual beauty which is on par with looking into a fire it's so intricate in how the bubbles rise and how the colors go from brown to cream to black. It's a beautiful thing to watch and you can't not watch it. Just like the way you can't not watch a fire burning.

I think this, this pint glass, when you do that to the human mind, it creates a contemplative space. Watching your pint of Guinness settle and rise, immediately it's a contemplative space. You get a little moment of flow seeing these complex patterns. You naturally reflect while staring at the pint of Guinness. What's also fascinating about Guinness is the language, the language around it. You must wait for a pint of Guinness for it to settle.

Like liquid doesn't, I don't associate liquid with settling. I never look at a glass of water and say a glass of water needs to settle. Or even a pint of lager and say a pint of lager needs to settle. Settling, settling is the opposite of travelling. The language of travel has now been brought into this point of Guinness people settle liquid doesn't settle sediment settles

mud settles, people settle liquid doesn't settle so why do we have a fucking drink which is you know, drank by emigrants and immigrants are far away from Ireland with this drink that settles what the Irish psyche has done is we we have we've projected and the narrative of our own journey of emigration onto these little black drinks that's what we've done and when you're

over in London or you're in Australia or New York and you're missing home and you you have this little drink and the Irish people around you have it too and the drink settles and you finish the narrative by taking a sup you've completed a little journey a little story that makes the Irish person feel as if I've made the journey I've made the journey I've done the big trip I'm here now I'm settling I'm settling and the obsession with this Guinness not traveling well which is hyperbole it's an exaggeration the exaggerated performance of no you get the best Guinness there you get the best it's not the same as it was back in fucking limerick it's not the same as it was back in mayo you're just you're imbibing the the emigrant

narrative journey into your drink that's what it is you're imbibing a narrative into it a narrative that doesn't really exist certainly not nowadays like okay i've been in america the guinness does taste slightly different in america not because it doesn't travel because it's made differently in america in australia australian guinness has a slight taste of strawberry to it very strange but the guinness in england it's the same shit it's made in dublin you're not going to taste the difference and anyone who says they're tasting the difference you know it's it's performative they're pretending now it can be poured badly and then it'll taste different and it's tied in as well with the irish pub like when i first started touring doing gigs

going to canada going to australia going to Canada going to Australia going to England years ago like a tradition within the Irish community when you go to us to Sydney when you go to Toronto one of the first things you do is you search for the Irish pub and people say why do you do that you have to settle yourself first you have to settle yourself first. You have to settle yourself first. Settle yourself in the Irish pub. If you're in New York, because you'll get overwhelmed. You'll get overwhelmed by the tall buildings.

It's all too new. So go to the Irish pub where everything in there looks exactly like back home. The windows are blacked out. You might as well be in Thurles. Settle yourself in the Irishish pub have a guinness the guinness settles drink your own journey drink a pint of the journey that you took with the dark murky waters and the fucking waves rushing up and drink that journey and then you settle and that's what the guinness is that that's that's what it is we've reclaimed it by

that's our food culture we've we've we've imbibed the narrative into a fucking drink and then you get to hold it and you get to look around at the other irish people and they're holding the same drink and it's like wearing a little badge on your fist a drinkable fist badge but above all the pint of Guinness is it's reliable it's reliable you rely upon it you want, you expect and want consistency with it

you never want two pints to be different every pint must be perfectly poured taste the same and that's your pint of Guinness your settled Guinness that's fucking reliable amongst the pressures and that's your pint of guinness your settled guinness that's fucking reliable amongst the pressures and chaos of life and the best example of this within culture of course is the poem by flan o'brien who's my favorite writer flan o'brien wrote a poem

called the workman's friend and this is a poem about a pint of Guinness. Which is, I think he wrote it in the 1950s. So he refers to the pint of Guinness in this poem as a pint of plain. Because in Dublin vernacular at that time a pint of plain was just simply a pint of stout. But it's about Guinness. When things go wrong and will not come right though you do the best you can. When life looks black as the hour of night a pint of plain is your only man. When money's tight and hard to get and your horse has also ran. When all you have is a heap of debt

a pint of plain is your only man. When health is bad and your heart feels strange. And your face is pale and wan. When doctors say you need a change. A pint a plane is your only man. When food is scarce and your lard are bare. And no rashers grease your pan. When hunger grows as your meals are rare. A pint a plane is your only man. In times of trouble and lousy strife you have still got a

darling plan you can still turn to a brighter life a pint of plain is your only man so that's flan o'brien just saying a pint of plain is your only man and what that is that means reliability rock solid no matter what the fuck happens no matter what shit is going on, you can have a fucking reliable pint of Guinness, no matter where you are in the world, a nice settled pint of Guinness will ground you, and I like that poem, but it annoys me because I fucking adore Flann O'Brien, that is that's not his best work that's not even amongst his good work to tell you the truth lads but it's his

best known work and that bothers me it's like when fucking David Bowie died and everyone started talking about his appearance in Labyrinth and I just had to turn off the internet and go David Bowie's dead and you're talking about fucking Labyrinth where he played

an elf are ye it's like that it's it's it's it's his best known work but fuck me go and read the third policeman so my my historical hot take on guinness it was a penal law drink to oppress the irish people and then we reclaimed it as something into which we could write the story of our own emigration and then drink that as a way of settling ourselves so Guinness now, Guinness in the age of memes, Guinness as it

what does it mean to millennials we'll say in Generation Z I was drawn, I started off the podcast by saying that I was asked during the week to contribute to an article about Guinness and the person writing the article, Polly

drew my attention towards a Rubber Bandits sketch from 2010 that I'd forgotten about called the Rubber Bandits Guide to London and there's just a little bit in the sketch where me and Mr. Crumb are in London in an Irish pub

and the kind of sketch is we're sitting down with two pints of Guinness in front of us and we're going I'm scared to drink it, I'm scared to drink the Guinness, why? in case it's different to the Guinness back home and I'd forgotten that and I was

when I wrote that I was actually taking the piss out of older lads that wasn't something in 2010 that young lads would say to each other I was taking the piss out of old lads

that's like something, we were in an old Irish part of London and this Guinness not being the same back home thing was something I'd heard from like my dad. So I was taking the piss out of that then. And the comedy from it was the absurdity of two lads in their early 20s genuinely worried that a Guinness in London

is different to a Guinness back home. That was an antiquated idea and that's why I thought it was funny in 2010 and I'd forgotten about that completely and I found it amusing now that this has returned as an acceptable position this is now an acceptable position that once again the Guinness is different back home

than it is abroad that was a that was a fucking dark weekend if you look at that sketch as well the rubber bandits guide to London literally those two pints of Guinness in front of us were the first ever Guinness I had drank outside of Ireland I think it was my first time in London it was my first time in London and that was you know legally being able to drink as well, but yeah, that was a dark weekend, RTE brought us over, and RTE of course are cheap, cheap fuckers, and they put me up in a, they put me up in a hotel room, where your man Dennis Nielsen had murdered a lot of people, and there was vomit behind my headboard it was a horrible freaky

fucking hotel and then i looked it up afterwards and dennis nielsen had murdered people there so that's what i remember rather than my first point of kindness i remember staying in dennis nielsen's hotel room the the first of two occasions where i unwittingly stayed in a hotel room where a mass murder occurred. The second time being in 2013 where I stayed in Queen Street in Sydney. Is it Sydney or Melbourne? I think it's Melbourne. Queen Street in Melbourne where the Queen Street massacre occurred. My hotel room and bed was on the floor where the queen street massacre occurred and

several murders happened where my bed was so that's twice unwittingly that's happened to me back to guinness what is this new definition of guinness in 2021 what what is what does a pint of guinness mean to us today what does it say about ourselves what does it say about our identity so it's it's changed slightly so firstly i do not associate a pint of guinness with getting drunk okay our parents generation might have because when you went to the pub in the 70s, 80s, early 90s you had a choice of three drinks from the taps and it was usually Guinness

some type of lager and if you're lucky cider and that was it and in a good bar they might have bottles so people drank Guinness to get utterly pissed. But culturally today, a pint of Guinness doesn't mean getting really, really drunk. It just doesn't. A pint of Guinness today means responsible socialising. That's, semiotically, that's what it communicates.

A pint of Guinness, as people use it on Instagram think of it if you look at Instagram and your friends are out and they all have pints of Guinness and nice smiles on their faces and they're you know posing for a photograph on Instagram pre-Covid it doesn't look like they're out for a mad one. It looks like we've gone to the pub for conversation as nice, responsible adults, and we're going to slowly drink our lovely, perfect, settled pints of Guinness. We're going to slowly drink these and talk and maybe have three, and no one's getting shit-faced. So the pint of Guinness doesn't connote drunkenness to Irish people in 2021

to Americans yes it does they go I'm gonna go to Temple Bar and drink 90 Guinness and get pissed that's not what Guinness is today in Ireland of course people are still drinking it and getting drunk of course but that's not what it communicates i think what guinness means today to millennials and i say millennial millennial is basically anyone from the ages of 25 to 40 that's a millennial you can kind of include a bit of gen z in this but they might be a bit young for it a pint of guinness means i am an adult that's what it communicates. I am a responsible adult and I'm having a Guinness now. I might have one or two and I'm going to sip it slowly with friends on a work night

because I've got responsibilities in the morning. I'm an adult. That's what Guinness communicates today. Taking a photograph of a beautiful pint of Guinness and posting it on your Instagram is also a thing that we do everyone wants to get that perfect pint it's you post the pint of Guinness and it's like saying ah work is finished I'm relaxing I'm chilling I'm having this isn't it beautiful look at this lovely pint of Guininness i'm gonna appreciate this drink i'm gonna drink this slowly with friends over conversation and this is gonna be nice i'm a

responsible adult now i mentioned at the start of the podcast what one thing that has signified this new meaning of guinness for me is the instagram page shit london guinness okay the people so here's what in here's what's interesting about the shit london guinness instagram page it was started by a fella called ian right and ian had recently moved to london he's from cork and started to notice shit pints of guinness in various pubs in London. So again, it's exercising that Irish emigrant thing. Guinness doesn't travel well to London, but it's not the Guinness' problem this time.

It's the cultural knowledge of how to correctly fetishize and pour the perfect pint. That has not traveled well to london and now you have all these bars who think it's appropriate to serve guinness in a foster's glass so by calling it a shit london pint what you're doing basically is you're stamping your irishness your authenticity so this page shit london guinness it's got a hundred thousand likes most the irish people so if it has a hundred thousand fucking likes in a year that means it's really popular and it's it has its finger on on the pulse of something cultural now what i find really interesting is ian who runs shit london guinness he used to run a meme page a very popular irish meme page called humans of the sesh now humans of the sesh

was an Irish meme page that fetishized the sesh right and this was about 2015 2016 and the lads who were creating this page they would have been 1920 at the time when they made humans of the sesh and the audience would have been about that age too. Humans of the Sesh also created the phrase, which became a meme, Big Massive Bag of Cans with the Lads. Now, Big Massive Bag of Cans with the Lads was something everybody would have said like five, six years ago. Big Massive Bag of Cans with the Lads and the sesh and humans of the sesh what that meant was people in their early 20s drinking a big massive bag of cans at a festival or at a

house party drinking really cheap cans just to get drunk and fucked up and shit london guinness is now made by the same people except they're about 26 27 so the fetishization of the perfect pint of guinness it's just like a step up from the sesh the person who engages in the sesh the sesh is a mad explosion of drink and drugs and partying in a house party. Like, when I said earlier, when I see a pint of Guinness on Instagram, I don't associate that with someone getting drunk. What you associate with people getting drunk is photographs of cans in someone's house. People don't really... Getting drunk in the pub. Of course you get drunk in the pub

but like pints are really expensive pints are really really expensive so people tend to get blind shit face fucked up at house parties at sessions and then when you go to the pub that's more drinking responsibly now people still get drunk but going mad is festivals and house parties the pub is is losing its potency as a site of drunkenness in irish culture if that makes sense I'm not saying it's completely lost its potency it's losing the potency it once had as a site of drunkenness and the house party and the sesh has taken over from that but yeah but I think the

current fetishisation fetishisation of the perfect Guinness pint as it appears on Instagram as is represented by the average person who likes the page shit London Guinness it's a marker of adulthood it's people who are now 26 27 who five years ago were having a big massive bag of cans with the lads are engaging in the sesh now these are people who have jobs

they might live in London they might live in london they might live in canada they have responsibilities and now they're finding a responsible way to drink the pint of guinness the pint of guinness in 2021 has almost become the glass of wine it's almost a glass of wine you don't go mad on guinness you sip it slowly with friends you appreciate its aesthetic beauty to scull a pint of Guinness is to waste a pint of Guinness you have to truly enjoy it it's narrative and I think that's a good thing I think that's really healthy and it's a sign of it's confident there's a there's a great confidence in that. To appreciate your pint of Guinness is a confident act.

It says, I'm capable of restraint. I'm capable of appreciating aesthetics. I know who I am. And it's very far removed from the image of the pint of Guinness as it's represented in Paddy's Day, in St. Patrick's Day, which is more of an American view, which views pints of Guinness as getting utterly shit-faced. Like, even in America, there's a type of Guinness that you can buy in America, that you can only buy in America.

I think it's called Guinness lager. Basically, what it is, is that it's a weak american lager that's just black with a white head so it's not an actual pint of guinness it's made by guinness but all it's for is for yanks on paddy's day who can't deal with the taste of guinness so they have to have this fake black beer that looks like guinness just for the photographs and this this recent fetishization of Guinness where it's been it's been it's it's been culturally raised as like I said something that's analogous to I didn't say that right analogous that's a word out there there you go now I've just learned a word I can't say analogous analogous I've only ever written that down i've never said it out loud and an analogous in 2021 a pint of guinness is an analog of a glass of wine amongst irish millennials

and i don't mean a glass of wine when irish people drink a glass of wine we can't really drink a glass of wine because we go look at me i'm a responsible adult drinking a glass of wine but i'm also classy that's what wine means to us we're not ready for wine yet wine is fancy classy and posh okay guinness is not what i mean when i say that a pint of guinness is becoming an analog to a glass of wine I mean the way a glass of wine is to a millennial in France or Spain. If a person in France or Spain or Italy has a glass of wine they're not looking at their glass of wine going look at me I'm so posh and fancy with my wine. They're going no here is some wine it's part of my culture. It's not expensive.

It's an adult drink to be sipped amongst friends and appreciated. And that's what Guinness has become. It's our wine. It's not pretentious. When an Irish person drinks a glass of wine in that way, there's an element of pretension. It's, I'm a responsible adult, but ooh, aren't i also classy with my wine with guinness it's quite simply here's a fucking pint of guinness this is mine it's my culture this is my

drink and i'm sipping this with friends socially and isn't it beautiful and it's very wholesome and it's very authentic a couple of things have done this in my opinion the disappearance of nightclubs the fact that like i said pubs are in in irish culture pubs are no longer becoming exclusive sites of drunkenness sites of drunkenness tend more to be house parties instagram has played a large part and then the absolute explosion of this over the past year coronavirus you know why is an instagram page with just beautiful pints of guinness becoming so popular in the past year because we can't fucking have them we can't have them we can't go to the pub and have the beautiful perfect pint of guinness because they're all closed because we're in lockdown and I remember in July when lockdown was lifted slightly and we could get a pint in a restaurant

everyone was talking about oh my god we've been in lockdown for three months I can't wait until my first pint it became an unwritten unwritten rule in Ireland that if you're going to post your first pint it must be Guinness people were getting shamed for posting pints of Heineken pints of Peroni people were getting shamed the fuck you posting this for this is your first pint in three months that you're allowed to have you were only allowed post a pint of Guinness so the Guinness has become uber fetishized because we can't really have it the other thing with Guinness too you can try your best with a can at home Guinness from a fucking tap in a pub is a different experience from Guinness in a can even if there's a widget

so it's now uber fetishized because we can't fucking have it it's that simple unless you've got a tap in your gaff you're not getting that perfect point to guinness was guinness what was guinness seen as like a responsible markerhood of i am a responsible adult with their shit together and i'm not gonna go mad was it was it this way 10 years ago no it fucking wasn't and i'm gonna tell you why not because i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna end this on the tale of arthur's day arthur's day arthur's day was fucking mad arthur's day was a very short-lived annual event from 2009 to 2013 and i fucking remember it okay Okay. Arthur's Day was. It started in 2009. As the 250th anniversary of the Guinness Company.

And. Basically. Like. What it was is. Ireland tried to do Paddy's Day too. We tried to have a second Patrick's Day. Because. 2009. 2009.

Was the height of the fucking recession the country was fucked everyone had emigrated the only people left who were young were students that was it so Ireland decided we need to have another St Patrick's Day in September because this might bring some tourists and people will drink and good God we need money in the economy so Guinness invented this fictional day called Arthur's Day which was an absolute fucking disaster I think it was like at 6 o'clock

everyone had to raise their pint of Guinness at 6 o'clock to Arthur and say to Arthur the fucking Protestant Unionist who hated Catholics everyone had to raise their glass to Arthur but really what it was is now I remember it being fucking great

because it was around the time of Horse Outside we had a huge fucking hit and all these hits on YouTube and our career as the Rubber Bandits. Went really big. At a time when the recession was. Fucking terrible.

And all the young people were gone. So we couldn't get any gigs. No one had money to go to gigs. At all. So even though. Our songs were doing well. We weren't doing fucking gigs. And earning money.

Because there was no young people. So what happened is arthur's day was it actually meant you got fucking paid so we i think we gigged every single arthur's day in some venue in dublin and got paid really well to do it by guinness because it's not ticket sales but it was carnage it was basically a giant drinks promotion and tourists didn't bother coming over for it unfortunately as well when the fuck was it man it was at the end of september which coincided with a lot of freshers weeks with college so the level of fucking debauchery and public drunkenness that arthur's day caused was unparalleled there was

no tourists around it was just drunk students from the country in dublin getting their first taste of being unspeakably drunk and guinness became synonymous at that time because it was arthur's day the guness was cheap, wasn't expensive and a lot of places were just throwing it out for free so you had this never ending fucking Guinness, everyone was rat arsed and what, I'll tell you what

caused the end of Arthursday it was at the start of like 2010 people sharing things on YouTube and sharing things on facebook and videos started to go viral of instead of guinness wanting to see arthur's day this big celebration videos started to go viral for the first time of unbelievable public drunkenness and i know i tell you the video that fucking ended it

because it went viral on YouTube and it went viral on Facebook around 2010 2011 and I remember it well it was just Temple Bar about a thousand students jumping around singing and it's the middle of the day

it's clearly like three o'clock in the day and everyone is so so drunk and a circle emerges in the middle of temple bar and everyone's screaming and roaring and then into the circle these two lads of about 19 or 20 start dancing in the middle of the circle while everyone's cheering around them. And there's bottles smashing on the ground. People are throwing glasses. There's chaos. The two lads are really happy, but they're in an ecstatic drunk trance.

It's not healthy. Whatever type. It was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I'm going to do a podcast on Hieronymus Bosch but it was really was like a vision of hell in Temple Bar on Arthur's Day and there's all these pints of Guinness flying around the place in plastic glasses too which is never a good look and people throwing Guinness in the air because it's free so these two lads anyway a circle emerges and they're dancing in the middle then they strip down completely naked so now you have these two lads anyway, a circle emerges and they're dancing in the middle. Then they strip down completely naked.

So now you have these two fully naked young men, drunk. And one of them starts rolling around on the ground on broken glass. And now there's blood all over his chest. But everyone is just screaming and roaring and entranced in the sheer debauchery. This awful energy, so one lad has blood coming down his fucking naked chest, fully naked, and then he grabs the other man, the other, the other boy, as blood drips down his chest, and he picks the other man up, picks his naked body up, and holds him like a guitar. As the people.

The drunk people of Dublin cheer. And then he starts playing his dick. Like a guitar. He starts holding the other. The other man. Like a guitar. And playing his dick. As blood streams down his chest.

And then Arthur's day was over. And that was it. It was just. We can't do that again. We can't. This is going to hurt Guin was just, we can't do that again. This is going to hurt Guinness. This is going to hurt Guinness more than the fucking IRA. And that video went viral.

And Arthur's Day ended. 2013. Done. No more. This is not a... And that's what Guinness meant. In 2011. That Guinness was fucked. It was like, this is the drink that you drink.

To roll around on the cobbles of Dublin. In the wet freezing rain at 2 o'clock in the daytime. Get naked. Roll around in glass. And play your friend's dick like a guitar. That's what Guinness means. So I just think it's fantastic in 2021. That it's gone full circle to now mean and those lads

they're probably 30 now those lads god bless them with the blood on their chest playing each other's dicks they're probably 30 now and i'm sure they might even be listening to this podcast fair play to you i'm sure they're now on instagram with their lovely perfect pints of guinness going look at me ma'am i'm a responsible adult with my perfect pint of guinness and i have a job and responsibilities and i'm certainly not going to slice my chest open and play someone's dick so that's my hot take on guinness that's my hot take on guinness i hope you enjoyed that i'm sure there was other shit I wanted to talk about was there yeah yeah

one redeeming thing one redeeming 2010's thing for Guinness and it kind of ties in as well with chicken fillet rolls too Barack Obama visited Ireland in I think it was 2012

so Barack Obama visited Ireland now as I mentioned last week when Barack Obama visited Ireland the village of Moneygall in Offaly to visit his because he had Irish ancestors, his ancestral home we built a petrol station.

In his honour. And. With some fine fucking crows there today. Eating sausage rolls. We built a petrol station in his honour. Because that's what we do now in Ireland. And. But also.

Just a stone's throw from Barack Obama Plaza. Was it called Ollie Smith's? What was the name of the pub he went to a stone's throw from Barack Obama Plaza Barack Obama went to the little village

of Moneygall his ancestral home and he went to the local pub Ollie Hayes's because they're still dining out on it they're still

they have a caricature of Obama Barack Obama went to this little Irish pub and any time a foreign dignitary or a famous person comes to Ireland

they have to drink the pint of Guinness sometimes a famous person who's in an Irish pub is asked to go behind the counter of the bar and pull a pint of Guinness which if you're a famous person listening, never do that because you're always going to get it wrong

don't go behind the bar and publicly pull a pint of that because you're always going to get it wrong don't go behind the bar and publicly pull a pint of Guinness you're going to get it wrong and you'll be judged so when a famous dignitary comes to Ireland they have to drink a pint of Guinness no matter who the fuck it is

and we judge them we judge them on how they drink it Barack Obama fucking nailed it Barack Obama he nailed it Barack Obama he was in the pub it's like here's his ancestral home he's given the pint of Guinness right and

he just drinks it he he really did a good job it was good for his image it was good for the image of Guinness he's given the pint to Guinness perfectly poured and the way he sips it he sips the Guinness

like someone who's just done a hard day's work who was really looking forward to it he takes about an inch a good inch a proper gulp this was someone who has drank who's drank Guinness before this is someone who appreciates it, who enjoys it

but he was able to communicate, I have worked for this pint I have worked for this, because the first sup of Guinness is always the big one that's the first sup of the first pint that's the big sup and then the rest is sipped he went straight for it

he nailed it and actually that was 2011. So Barack Obama's fantastic sipping. And when he does it as well, the whole pub just goes, Why? Because he did such a brilliant job of sipping the pint. At that moment, it's like he's a paddy. His great-grandfather was from Moneygall. This man's a paddy. His great grandfather was from Moneygall.

This man's a paddy. You're Irish. That was real proper Guinness fucking drinking. Fair play to you Barack. But all that good work was undone. By the lad who played his friend's dick like a fucking guitar. With blood streaming down his chest. Alright.

God bless. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City

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