The Blindboy Podcast - Butter Melting Down The Neck Of A Warm Horse

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

An episode about Autistic Masking  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dog bless you hesitant Kevin's. Welcome to the Blind by a podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. We're in the gosset, the gosset of February. Things are getting nice and sweaty out there. I experienced my first blast of decent sunshine the other day. The type of sunshine that hits your back

and lets you know that you have to start changing the clothes that you're wearing. That you have to adjust your attire because you're moving into a new season. And the birds have started chirping. There's no more silence in the trees. Now February, it's a greasy month. It's dirty, it's mucky. It's a very teenage. It's a very teenage month.

Remember when you were like 12 or 13 and you get to. subtle hormonal changes in your body. You come home from school and your school jumper is sticky and so is your shirt. And you're suddenly thrust into this new routine of personal hygiene. It's like, oh, you got to shower every fucking day now. You have to wear deodorant and you get spots on your face. The change comes so quick that it takes a while to figure it out and to get comfortable with the new things that are happening to your body.

February as a month is a bit like that. visually it still looks like winter the trees are bare but the ground is warming up so everything's all muddy when you walk in it and you're just waiting for things to settle so you can finally call it spring and I'm not going to say February's my favourite

month it's not but the name the name February by far it's my favourite month because the origin story where the word February came from now I've always had a problem with the word February

because of that fucking R that's in the middle. I used to always say to myself, why can't it just be like January? Like January is a wonderful month to pronounce January. Where's this R coming from? Why can't it just be February? But the story of that R is fantastic. I'm nearly sure I did a podcast on this,

an entire podcast on the history of February. See, that's it. I say it enough times and I can't fucking pronounce it every year. Back in 2023, I think it did a full podcast on the month of February. February comes from a device that was called a februous. How do I explain what a februis is? So the ancient Romans had a thing about wolves. The Romans celebrated a pagan festival on the 15th of January. It was a fertility festival called Lupercalia. And Lupus in Latin means wolf. There's a cave. There was a cave in ancient Rome.

Well, it's still there, called the Lupercal at the foot of the hill of Palantine. And this cave was important because the Romans believed that that's where Rome was founded by Romulus and Ramos. They were two brothers. And as babies, they were raised by a wolf. They were raised on the milk of a wolf. But Ramos killed his brother Ramos, and then Rambulis founded Rome. I suppose I can't mention that without talking about a fella called Virgil.

Virgil was a poet. He would have existed. He was born about 70 BC, so 70 years before the part of Christ. And Rome, when he was born, a bit like America now. So what we're seeing with America at the moment, the United States, is the mask is slipping. America is no longer pretending to be the land of the free, where with democracy and equality.

Now, under Trump and the narrative of MAGA, America has become a nationalistic dictatorship. And now US foreign policy, it's now overtly and explicitly entitled. You saw that with what happened with kidnapping in the president of Venezuela, trying to conquer Greenland, Now America was always interfering with other countries, but they'd do it in a sneaky covert way.

This time the mask is slipping and they're going, no fuck that, we do what we want. We're America and we're on the path of making it great again. So our destiny is to do what we want. And the poet Virgil back in Rome, he was born into the Roman Republic and then he watched it go from the Republic into the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire, the mask slipped. The Roman Empire became expansionist colonial entitled and had a narrative of greatness and destiny.

And the person who canonized and wrote that myth was Virgil. Vargil wrote a book called The Aenid. He took stories from oral mythology and canonized it into a book and said, This is the story of Rome. And the Aynid was embraced by the word. this new Roman Empire as here it is, here is the story of greatness. This is why Rome is great and we're destined to greatness and when we're special and when we can do whatever the fuck we

want and take over whatever we want. Here it is, here's the story of Rome. Make Rome great again. Rome now had its central text that made it appear to be as great as the ancient Greeks. It was MAGA. And just like now you've got your billionaires who are funding the MAGA idealism. You've got Elon Musk, who's not funding any individual writers, but he's funding, he bought Twitter and turned it into X. And X is just a propaganda machine for MAGA. And you've got organizations like Turning Point, Charlie Kark's organization, now Erica Kark. You saw them there at the weekend. They had their alternative MAGA Super Bowl.

That's propaganda. It's propaganda. It's theater. It's theatre and entertainment, which borrows from professional wrestling theatrics. It's the aestheticisation of MAGA ideology, right? So it creates spectacle, performance and entertainment, not just turning point. Fox News does it as well. We all saw clips of Charlie Kirk's remembrance service with his wife Erica.

clearly with fake tears and fireworks and it felt like watching WWE felt like professional wrestling. That's deliberate. It's completely deliberate. It's theater. It's MAGA ideology, but aestheticized and funded by billionaires. Funded by billionaires to advance policies and to manufacture consent for things that benefit billionaires.

MAGA is, it's a national restoration myth, right? so it's this claim of a lost greatness that you've got to bring back. You make America great again. It's a loyalty centered around one leader, Donald Trump. It's not democratic. It's around one fucking leader. Politics become spectacle and entertainment. And people are mobilized not through critical thinking or debate,

but through emotional mobilization, through theater. The transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire was quite similar. They now had their myth, the foundational myth in the anid in Virgil's writing. Rome that now had this wonderful story about how great it was, was now destined to rule. This was destiny, it was like religion. And spectacle started to replace politics. You had triumph, games, ritualised performance, and this replaced, fucking civic deliberation did it call it, this replaced debating, public,

publicly arguing, democracy. And Fargel was at the center of all of that because he wrote this anid, this huge foundational myth. He canonized it. And he was funded by billionaires too. He was funded by, he was patronized by a fella called Mycenaeus.

And Mycenae was, Elon Musk, I suppose. He was a political advisor in the way that Elon Musk was before he fell out with Trump. But it's like, what the fuck are you doing, Musk? you're not a politician, what are you?

You're just hanging around Trump. He was a political advisor and a funder and a billionaire. And this Mycena's fella, he was the same. He was the patron of Virgil. He funded Virgil while Virgil wrote. The Aenid. Mycenaeus, he owned the world's first heated swimming pool. So that'll tell you about his wealth.

I mean, now Elon Musk is so wealthy that he can fly to the moon on his own rocket ship if he wants. 30 years before the birth of Christ the equivalent of that was I have the world's first heated swimming pool that's how wealthy I am and that's who funded Virgil who canonised

and give it a linear narrative and a definitive mythology of the greatness of Rome make Rome great again that's what Virgil did and right there at the beginning of the Aeneid is the story of Romulus and Ramos and Ramos you can go to that cave

the Lupercal cave and this is where it all started. These two babies, I think one of their dads was the God Mars. And these two babies were sockled on a wolf and Romulus founded Rome. So there was a festival that was widely celebrated on the 15th of February called Lupercalia. It was a wolf festival, but it was a fertility festival. It was a sex festival. Now it's important to note, Virgil didn't invent Lupercalia, this pagan festival that celebrated the wolf. That was there fucking years before Virgil.

See, the pagan festival of Lupercalia, the Wolf Festival, it becomes absorbed into the great myth of Rome. It's symbolically absorbed because this wolf festival then legitimizes the mythical geography of Rome. it's like there's the cave over there where Romulus and Ramos were born and now you celebrate this festival so now this pagan thing gets folded into a nationalism and the MAGA equivalent is like the Super Bowl there was at the weekend

and the Puerto Rican performer Bad Bunny was the main event during the fucking Super Bowl I don't fully understand the Super Bowl right but it was all Spanish language now first off the Super Bowl was also propaganda no disrespect to bad bunny, no disrespect to people in America who speak Spanish. It was controlled theatre. It was the appearance of being subversive. The NFL, the National Football League in America, is not fucking subversive.

It's billionaire dominated. It's a cartel of franchises. It's the machine of American capitalism. And it's broadcast on the networks, which are also for. funded by billionaires. So I would call the Super Bowl halftime show that everyone saw clips of on the internet. That's controlled opposition. The half time show at the Super Bowl is one of the biggest events in America. The advertisement slots that are purchased are the most expensive advertisement slots. This is big money. This year, the main performance, the main musical and dance performance was by the Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny. It was all in Spanish. Why do I consider that to be properly?

I think it was deliberately so that white American people would feel overwhelmed and it justifies the actions of ICE. Ice are operating as a Gestapo. They're illegally detaining people, people who speak Spanish, people from Central and South America. They're doing this. They're killing people. They're imprisoning, detaining people without due process. You're seeing the the collapse of civil rights of law and order. If you're a white person sitting at home trying to enjoy the Super Bowl in your small little white American town, and if for one second you're starting to think, Jesus, maybe this ice thing is a bit heavy-handed,

maybe I don't like this. Two people were murdered in Minnesota, and you're seeing people who voted MAGA, now going, I didn't vote for this, I didn't want this. podcasters like Joe Rogan who encouraged people to vote for Trump they're now saying that

I didn't want this I didn't know this was going to happen now all of a sudden you're trying to watch the Super Bowl and the half-time show is in Spanish language it's to make those people feel overwhelmed it's to make those people feel

oh my God the country is actually being taken over by people who are not quote unquote American people who speak Spanish and maybe I'm being cynical I just, I refuse to believe that the NFL and the TV networks in America are going to do something subversive on behalf of the Spanish speaking community in America. I think it was theater, controlled opposition theater,

to make a white American audience feel as if they're being replaced, they're being overwhelmed. And then Fox News, theatrically, we're saying, this is wrong, this is wrong, we need something American. So they did the alternative, the turning point, USA had an alternative Super Bowl show with Kid Rock. White people stuff, all white people stuff on the Turning Point USA alternative Super Bowl show, right? But I saw footage of the right-wing Fox News presenter Megan Kelly,

and she was screaming and roaring saying, This is disgraceful. We can't have the Super Bowl show and they're speaking Spanish. We need something American. We need Apple Pie. And she started screaming. We want Apple Pie. So then you get this vision of Apple Pie?

pies and small rural American towns full of white people. Maga and Trump didn't invent that. It's a folk memory of how things used to be. But now small towns and apple pie becomes folded into the Maga myth. And that's what happened with Lupercalia in Rome. It existed before the Roman Empire. It existed for hundreds of years. But it becomes, because it legitimizes the foundational myth,

it becomes make Rome great again. So what did people do on Lupercalia? on February 15th in Rome. Well, it was about fertility, so they couldn't sacrifice a wolf because wolves were hard to catch. So they'd sacrifice a goat or often a dog. They'd sacrifice a dog

because dogs were easy to come by. But then they'd make whips from the skin of the dead dogs, of the sacrificed dogs. They'd make whips from this skin. and men would whip women's arses with the dogskin and this dog skin was called a febrious, a februous. And the reason the whipping would occur is, it was a fertility festival.

So it was believed that the whipping of the arse with the dead dogskin would promote fertility, easy childbirth, menstrual regulation. It was a fertility. festival and that's what a februis is. It was the skin of a dead dog that was used to slap arces. And that's why February is called February, the februous. That's what that is. That's what the are is there, the februis, the skin of the dead dog for whipping arces. And because it's February 15th, and it was a fertility festival, a sex festival, and it was the 15th of February, it's likely that That slowly evolved into Valentine's Day,

into why Valentine's Day is associated with romance and love and courtship. So learning all that to give me great respect for the month of February. So I'm currently mid-Irish podcast tour. Had a wonderful gig a couple of days ago in Vicar Street up in Dublin. I'm getting ready for Belfast now on Thursday. I've got an amazing guest. She's a professor, a professor of psychobiology called Daisy Fancourt. She did major research into the psychological impact of the COVID pandemic.

The impact of the COVID pandemic on people's mental health. And she also does an incredibly unique research into the impact that art has on her emotional well-being and our mental health. and that's something I can't wait to speak about because, I mean, that's my practice. I've known that through lived experience for years, art, creativity, not just making it, but enjoying it, has been huge for my mental health, for my sense of meaning. I don't exaggerate when I say that music. Save my life when I was a teenager. really dark times experiencing anxiety and depression and not having a language to understand my emotions or any tools

listening to music give me joy and a feeling of meaning and an escape from pain and any of you who enjoy art or enjoy music we know in our bones that whether you're creating art or enjoying art that this is hugely beneficial to our moods and our well-being. We know this shit. But to have a professor who's studying this, who's researching this, it's very exciting because art and creativity, they're not taken seriously in society.

When I was in school, these art or music weren't taken seriously as subjects. I can't just have been my school, but if we had double art, double art on a Wednesday when I was back in school and that meant two classes in a row which was like 90 minutes if other teachers

if you're fucking economics teacher or a business teacher heard that you were going to double art they'd joke about it you're off Dawson up an art class instead of valuing it double art class I'm being allowed to put my headphones on while I drew for 90 minutes

it's one of the few things that not only made school tolerated for me. But as an undiagnosed autistic kid, that's when I wasn't in trouble. That's when I was happy. That's when I was engaging with school and being happy to be there. So I can't wait to speak to a scientist who's studying this and can show data around it. And then I'm getting ready after that. I'm going up to Galway on Sunday. In Leisureland. I'm going to have Tommy Ternan as my guest. I forgot that Tommy lived in Galway and I asked him at the last minute. Tommy is a comedian and a storyteller, but he has a philosopher's head on him.

And Galway this Sunday, this will be the fifth time that me and Tommy Tiernan sit down and record a chat. And the other four times have never been broadcast. He's been on the podcast, live podcast three times. And the reason I've never put the episodes out is we just rile each other up too much. we have too much crack and we start roaring and screaming and anytime we've done live podcasts

you had to have been there in the room if I don't put a live podcast out it's usually because that one was for the audience that were there on the night there's different energies that you can bring most of the time you want to do a live podcast

for the people that are sitting there those are the best live podcasts when the energy is there in the room and when you try and then play that on the podcast, it doesn't work as well because you had to have been there. The energy is off. And sometimes you do a live podcast and it's a bit quieter. And then that's usually more suited to putting it out here for everybody.

And then the fourth time I chatted with Tommy Tiernan, we had a... He was doing a documentary about four years ago about the West of Ireland. It was for television. And me and Tommy sat in a boat in the middle of locked dark with three cameras around us and we had a wonderful chat

for about 90 minutes about the history of the area about philosophy, about religion, about everything but because of the nature of broadcast television I'd say only about two minutes that ended up on actual television and then the rest of it just ends up on the cotton room floor

and there's nothing you can do with it because RTE owned the footage so you can't say can you put out that entire 90 minutes conversation with me and Tommy, they won't do it. Because television has a format, it's kind of stuck in the past. It's stuck in the past. And I remember saying it to him, put that out.

Put out 90 minutes unedited of me and Tommy having a chat on a fucking gorgeous boat in the middle of locked door. Do that. I promise you, people will watch it. But you couldn't. It's not, that's not broadcast language. That's podcast language. That's internet language.

That lack of flexibility is what's killing television. And I'm not singling out RTE there. That's every single broadcaster. Television is a format. And if you make something for television, you've got to stick within the format of TV. And the TV format is ruled by predictability, ratings and ad breaks.

And TV used to not be like that. In the olden days, in the golden age of live television, I'm talking 60s and 70s. That was kind of closer to podcasting and YouTube now. I give an example. Look up fucking firing line with William F. Buckley. I think all the episodes are on YouTube. Now William, he was a right-wing, yank bollocks.

But his TV show, it was just one long unedited debate. You'd have him sitting down arguing with people like, Hughie P. Newton from the Black Panthers. Or James Baldwin. This one from 1972 with Bernadette Devlin. Bernadette Devlin McCalliskey who have had on this podcast a couple of years ago

one of my proudest guests on this podcast. But there's herself and William F. Buckley just having an argument unedited for an hour. Amazing stuff. And the business model and format of television today because it's refusing to do things like that. It's being replaced by podcast. podcasts. But look this Sunday in Galway at Leisureland. Myself and Tommy Tiernan and hopefully

we record something that I can actually put out on this podcast. But I won't let that get in the way. If we end up playing to the crowd on the night then that's what needs to happen. Now there's only a handful of tickets left for that. There are tickets available but they're going to go quickly because I know people have been, people have been waiting for me and Tommy to do a podcast for years now. 2019, I'd say it was the last time I had him on. So I'm a busy goal this week. And again, I'm recording this podcast quite late. Let's have a little ocarina pause. I actually do have an ocarina.

I found this gorgeous little dainty. I think it's a 3D printed ocarina that someone made for me. It's a lovely little piccolo ocarina. And I'm going to play this and you're going to hear some adverts for bullshit. Oh. Dog warning. Warning for any dogs, anyone who has a dog. This is a high-pitched ocarina.

I'm going to step back a bit. It's a long time since I've played an ocarina during the ocarina pause. Several months, I'd say. There was an ocarina famine, an ocarina shortage. I'd too many ocarinas. And I started to become overwhelmed with ocarinas to the point that I'd needed to put them away because I'd become in a state of shock and awe.

With multiple ocarinas, That's what fucking happened. Too many ocarinas. I'd to get them away. They were crowding my studio space. I was fucking stepping on ocarinas. I'd about 43 of them. All different shapes and sizes.

Aztec death whistles. People were giving me ocarinas at gigs. And I'd acquired such a volume of ocarinas that it started to entrench upon my ability to organize myself. As mad as that sounds. All right? It was triggering exact.

speculative dysfunction, put it that way. But I put all the ocarinas into a box and I said, fuck it, I'll take one. So I picked this lovely 3D printed piccolo ocarina. All right, and that's what you just heard. Support for this podcast

comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you

listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I put in because this is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. It's how I rent out all my, my office, my studio. It's how I pay for all my equipment. It's how I pay my bills. This is how I earn a living. And this podcast is only possible because it's directly funded by the listeners, by the patrons. This is a fully independent podcast. And all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen for free. Listen to the podcast for free. Because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on soundness and kindness. Patreon.com

forward slash the Blindby podcast. So the upcoming gigs, as I mentioned this week, Thursday I'm in Belfast at the waterfront. Sunday at the 15th I'm in Galway, Leisureland. Oh, that'll be Lupercalia. Fuck it, I'm gigging Galway in Leisureland on Lupercalia. Please nobody bring the skin of a dead dog. But I tell you what, I can't wait to tell Tommy Tiernan about Lupercalia because he's going to fucking enjoy that.

Fuck all tickets left for those two gigs, obviously, because they're so close. Then end of the month down in Killarney in the Eyneck. my beloved broom closet I'm going to change inside in that tiny cupboard and have a think about my life if there's any you're welcome to give me a DM on Instagram

if you want to suggest guests for any of my podcasts but I fucking hell I've started posting reels on Instagram now and that's after putting me all over everybody's algorithm

which is a good thing but it means that I guess 20 to 30 messages a minute when I open my fucking DMs on Instagram and my reach this month was 8 million so that means 8 million accounts on Instagram

got me in their feed which is great because it means more 10 foot Declans listening to the podcast but it just means consistent fucking DMs and not all of them are nice a good 20% are very angry

Daz called Declan who want to get a few things off their chest because I still get DMs very very angry DMs from people like who are absorbed completely into

conspiracy beliefs especially around the pandemic I still get mails from people going you traitor you traitor you told people to wear masks during the pandemic but still if you see a gig coming up like that one and Kerry there

and you can think of interesting people that are local to carry that you'd like me to chat to. Fire me a DM, but if I don't respond, it's because 15 DAs have called me a cook beforehand. So in March, I'm in Carlo. On the 14th, yeah, the 26th I'm down in Cork at the Cork Podcast Festival that's almost sold out. Then I'm in Castle Blaney, wonderful Castle Blaney there in April. and finally Limerick Limerick City in April 9th

Oh and the other Vicker Street Other Vickr Street gig on the 20th of April Then my big tour of England, Scotland and Wales in October 26th which I know is a long way away But these gigs are setting out quick And someone Someone said to me today that they couldn't get tickets for London Because it was sold out

And I don't know if that's the case But that's very possible I don't have confirmation on that but London is almost sold out but someone today said they couldn't get tickets for London so I have a crack but anyway those gigs are Brighton Cardiff

Coventry Bristol Guildford London Glasgow Gates said Nottingham down to the last tickets on a lot of them oh fuck in July as well

I'm in Sheffield I nearly forgot about that Sheffield Crossed Wires Festival in July at Sheffield at Sheffield City Hall because I had to come back to Sheffield. Something about Sheffield is calling me in the nicest way possible. I am marvelling at the slow collapse

of England. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just... When I went to... Lads, I was... I love Sheffield, right? But the last time that I was there, I was walking around and I'm like, what's this,

feeling. What's the feeling I'm getting here in Sheffield? I'm like, what? This feels familiar. I'm like, fuck, this is recession. Now, Limerick feels like that too, with all due respect. My last tour, every UK city I went to, the first place I'd visit would be the abandoned Debenams, just so it would feel like home. Because Debenams just shut down during the pandemic,

so every fucking city's got an abandoned Debenhams, and I go on. stand outside it. We're witnessing this collapse of retail everywhere. Retail isn't coming back. Huge companies are going into receivership. And what I think it is, it's obviously online. It's people buying things online. But the major one was, before the pandemic, only some people would buy things online. Back in 2019, buying things clothes. online was like a tech-savvy young person thing to do. And then what the pandemic did

is it meant that people's maz and people's daas all of a sudden now were purchasing things online. It made online purchasing and deliveries completely mainstream. And a lot of people didn't go back. So city centres are becoming quite empty. Limerick is fucking empty, completely empty. It's another example of how, I did a podcast a few weeks back about how I've been using the internet for 30 years.

And the internet is, it's making our lives a bit more miserable. And something I definitely didn't cover was how many people are just not leaving their houses now because of the internet? When people used to be bored, you'd just leave the house. When people were, like even in their neighbourhoods, Do you remember you go down a neighbourhood and there's just people hanging around the walls of their house talking to other neighbours? That's because they were bored. They just go outside and talk to their neighbour and hang around or go for a walk to be somewhere where other people are.

People aren't doing that now because a good half hour on TikTok just scrolling alleviates that boredom that would have gotten them out of the house. And no one's going into town now to purchase anything because they're just buying. I'm online. So our phones aren't just, it's not just the doomscroll that's making us more unhappy. We're physically not moving around as much anymore or going to places with other people.

And the other thing too, if you think of the average argument that you see on Instagram or Facebook, two strangers arguing about politics, roaring abuse at each other, the aggressive death threat DMs that I get, that wouldn't happen in a pub. That wouldn't happen in a pub or a shop.

In real life, these type of disagreements get diffused by banter so it doesn't spiral into complete aggression. Because it's all online now, you get that disinhibiting effect. And now people are at each other's throats and experiencing anger and rage and becoming entrenched in toxic beliefs instead of engaging in healthy conflict. Healthy conflict where a bit of banter is brought in,

people disagree and take the piss out of each other because that's what humans do. But with England in particular, something different is going on and I think it's Brexit. Now, there's no think. It simply is, all right? We're 10 years on now from Brexit and the reports are out. They're getting, like, GDP is down 8%

than if the UK had stayed in the EU and investment in the UK is down 18%. percent. Like that's a lot. And because my job is going back and forth for the past 20 years, I suppose, I'm able to see these things in real time and something that has really disappeared. Ten years ago, 15 years ago, when I'd go to England or Manchester, you're going there and it's like, oh, they have shit here that we're not going to see in Ireland until about five years. So like brands, clothing brands, or even food trends. Like 2012 when I was in London, I used to love Vietnamese noodles,

Faw, I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. And I knew when I was eating them, I'm like, oh, this is going to be in Limerick now in about 10 years time. And yeah, there's two or three, four restaurants now in Limerick. But that's not happening anymore now. So now as an Irish person, when I go to England, it's no longer a few years in the future. And going to Sheffield was the first time.

I was walking around. Like I noticed these things. Put it this way in 2011. Fucking height of the recession, height of the recession in Ireland. And I went to gig in Australia in 2011 and I went to Melbourne. And I was in this giant shopping centre in Melbourne. And I just noticed, I'm like, something's different. What's going on here?

What feels so different about this place? and I paused and it was the experience of people purchasing see back in Limerick we still had shopping centres but things were shuttered and even though certain shops were open people were walking around and they were browsing but no one was buying anything

but then when I was in Melbourne it's like what is this feeling what is this sound and it was the the cheerful enthusiasm of several hundred people who just made a purchase they walked a little quicker, the sound of bags rustling. It was a phenomenal thing to just experience viscerally.

And when I went to Sheffield, this summer I got the reverse. I walked around Sheffield and something in the ether felt different. And I'm like, what is this feeling? What is this? It's recession. This feels like 2014. This feels like Limerick in 2014. I'm feeling recession.

and the big indicator of course was being in a hotel and there's just one person working there there's just one person at the desk and they're also manning the bar and they're cleaning up that's big recession shit that is and I felt my heart broke for Sheffield

and the other thing then that I noticed and this isn't just Sheffield this is up and down the UK I'll never begrudge the Brits a good fucking breakfast The best hotel breakfasts come from the Brits. The Scottish are the best actually. The English. English is very good.

Scottish is the best. Wales is on par with English breakfasts. But hotels in England now. When you go for coffee in the morning at the coffee machine, at the breakfast fucking buffet, you press the button, you think you're getting coffee that came out of a bean. It's instant coffee.

They're rolling out the sneaky instant coffee in England. Now instant coffee is fine But you have to warn a person You can't place it in the machine That looks like you're getting bean coffee So then if you want a bean coffee for breakfast You have to pay for it separately So anyway, I'm back in fucking Sheffield in July

So one last thing I want to speak about it Is there's a TV series in Ireland Called The Assembly It's franchised all around the world As I understand it But what it is is It's a format where they get a celebrity in a room with like 15 autistic people

and then these autistic people ask the celebrity questions there's an Australian version a UK version and now there's an Irish version too on Virgin Media the purpose of the show is to to challenge stereotypes about autism for people to to centre autistic voices to give a platform to autistic people to autistic people.

So it's a model inclusiveness of autism in workplaces and stuff. But anyway, the Irish version is it's broadcasting on Virgin Media and I saw a promo clip that they were using on TikTok and Instagram the other night

and I ended up catching a few strays in it and it was, it didn't feel nice, didn't feel very nice. I'm going to play a clip from the show where I mentioned and so the person being interviewed is Ryan Tuberty who's an Irish broadcaster

and he's being interviewed by a fella called Phil who is an artistic poet as I understand it now they're just having crack and banter but the crack and banter insinuates that my name is brought up and it insinuates that I'm not really autistic this is the clip something and we're all the same we're all neurodivirited and we're not

Some people have different levels. So I just wouldn't know about that. And that's your call. When you see someone going, yes, I'm so neurodiverse, you're going, are you? You know, do you get bothered? Everyone's got their idea of it. Right. And do you get bothered when certain people say they've got certain things going on?

Did you say, no, that's your thing? Well, like recently when, like Blind Boy, the podcaster, he came out as neurodiverse. Someone I said, when I said that to my mom, he says he's autistic now, and she's like, don't let them take that away to your film. They're all saying it. They're all saying it. So that's the audio, right? Now first I want to say, both Phil and Ryan Tuberty,

they're just having crack. What they're saying there is pretty harmless. If I heard it in a pub, I wouldn't blink an eyelid. Neither of them are being nasty, mean, anything like that. And I really don't want anyone to be pissed off with either of them. Ryan Tubbery starts off with, because he's speaking to an autistic. person saying, I think what he's speaking about is when some people say like, oh, I'm very ADHD. Or if someone just loves facts, you know, they'll go, oh, I'm so autistic.

And sometimes people flippantly use labels like I'm so ADHD or I'm so autistic. And that's annoying for neurodiverse people because it minimizes the bits that you don't see. burnout, executive dysfunction, difficulty with emotional regulation, the difficulties that come with actually being noradiverse. So I think that's what Ryan Tauberti was asking this autistic person, Phil. And then Phil said, oh yeah, when Blind Boy came out as autistic, his mother said,

oh, they're all claiming it now, don't take that away from you. And then Rine Tauberty laughed. That's harmless. So Rine Tubberty's laughing. at the Irish Mammy reaction because it's funny and Phil there is talking about his ma's reaction

first off like I've spoken to Ryan Tuberty loads of times I've been on his TV shows I've chatted to him outside of the TV shows he's always been incredibly kind to me he listens to this podcast he's a fan of my work he's not going to be saying anything mean

or nasty about me I've also chatted to him enough times to know that he's not that type of person who says mean and nasty things about people. I also don't think Phil meant any harm whatsoever with his anecdote about his ma's reaction. Some people get-keep autism. When I got a diagnosis, I did get a tiny bit of pushback from some autistic people. Like there was one fella on Twitter. Now this fellow was also a long-term begrudger of me, like very, very jealous, a Twitter user, always being my mentions with jealousy.

but he was autistic and when I got diagnosed he goes unlike you I got diagnosed in childhood ridiculous but when you live under

fucking capitalism people will try and hoard anything and maintain the scarcity of that thing to increase its value so for some people a minority

if they're ADHD if they're autistic and this becomes their identity in a bit of a fucked up way, it can feel like a threat to their identity when autism becomes mainstream. The hipsterification of autism. People can hoard and defend autism

like it's a cool band that they don't want the normies to find out about. That exists. I've encountered it, it's rare, but it exists. So the actual comments that were made there, if I heard it in a different context, wouldn't give a fuck. And I'm saying it because,

if any of you listening, off by that clip, I'm asking you to please not take it out on either of those two people. I'm pissed off with virgin media. They should not have broadcast that. That flies in the fucking face. Like this is a TV show, The Assembly, where they're trying to center autistic voices, raise awareness about autism, what autism can be. The entirety of the autistic spectrum. Not editing that bit out

flies in the fucking face of that mission statement. Here's the facts. The facts are, I'm a diagnosed autistic person and Virgin Media aired a clip where the legitimacy

of my autism diagnosis is called into question. It's in the form of a harmless anecdotal joke. So that bit's grand, like I said. But the kind of the editorial context now is very different.

You fucking can't do that. I came across that clip for it also. They were using that clip on TikTok and Instagram. Virgin Media were using that clip on TikTok on Instagram to advertise the fucking show, to advertise. Someone thought it was a good idea that a good advertisement for a show that raises awareness around autism

is to broadcast a clip And the entire context of that clip is two people calling into question whether or not a public figure is actually autistic or not. I complained about it on Instagram in my stories. And loads of people were pissed off, so they went to the comments underneath Virgin Media's video on both TikTok and Instagram. And people were very pissed off, just going,

what the fuck? What do you bring him blind by you into this for? Are you saying he's not autistic? What are you doing? There was hundreds of comments. I commented as well, just basically asking them, but like, why are you doing this? And they deleted the videos,

which means they know they're wrong. And then when they deleted the videos, I thought, right, okay, the episode hasn't actually gone out. It's due to go out on Monday night. Maybe because they deleted these clips from Instagram and TikTok. They know that they fucked up and they're going to edit that out from the final episode. And they didn't do that either.

It's really irresponsible. I'm saying this not just as an autistic person, but I'm saying it as I make television. I have a TV production company. I understand editorial rules. What are he doing? And the damage that air in that clip does, especially on a program where you're trying to educate people about what autism is, that stigmatizes autism. When people say to me, you're not really autistic, you don't come.

across as autistic. I don't take that as a compliment. The artistic spectrum is very different and no two autistic people are going to be alike and I'm somebody who I can be pretty convincing at autistic masking. I can be very convincing at deploying the performance of being neurotypical because I've fucking learned to do that my entire life. Forcing, I went and studied to be a psychotherapist, lads, in my early 20s, I studied to be a psychotherapist. And when I was receiving my autism diagnosis, it was explained to me, and this is quite common, one of the things that would have drawn me towards training to be a psychotherapist is because when you train to become a psychotherapist, you train in how to read people's body language,

how to mirror people's body language. You train in what's called active listening, you train in skills of empathy, you learn about psychotherapeutic theory, which is almost the manual of what it is to be a human being. And when I learned all of these skills, even before I knew I was autistic, when I learned these skills, I was like, fuck it, I'm after finding it, I'm after finding the manual to not be a weird bastard. I'm after finding the manual to not meet a stranger and come away with them thinking that I'm eccentric or man. are all of these words that you get called when you're autistic, I can do a very good, normal, neurotypical performance.

It's what's so draining about being on tour and doing gigs. I've mentioned this before. I'm going to do two gigs this week, lads. And at each of these gigs, I'm going to meet multiple people at the venue. I'm going to have to speak to lighting engineers, sound engineers, security staff. I'm going to have lots and lots of. a small talk with loads of strangers and I'm going to do a brilliant job at it. I'm going to ground myself beforehand. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to be watching my breathing at all

times. I'm going to be thinking about what I'm saying, how I'm speaking, I'm going to be looking at that person's body language. I'm going to suppress the urge to start talking about why there's an hour in February and refocus my conversation to small talk and to speaking about what needs to spoken about. And I'm going to fucking do that and I'm going to nail it because I've been nailing that all my fucking life. And then when this tour is over, I'm going to start to feel confused and dizzy. And I'm going to struggle with responding to texts, answering emails. I'm going to have difficulty reading the clock. I'm going to have extreme difficulty planning my day, tidying up my studio, my space, and I'm going to do some dumb shit.

I'm going to do some fucking dumb shit. I'm going to leave the house with two different shoes on. I'm going to bump into a person I know and I'll start stammering and stuttering or flicking my fingers and I'll have to run away from that person and feel like a fucking cunt. What I'm describing there is executive dysfunction. The effort that it takes me to... be normal, to be a normal person, to do small talk, to speak with strangers, to do my job, that fucking effort, the cognitive load of that on me drains my social battery.

It's half four in the morning now. It is 4.30 a.m. in the morning and I'm delivering a podcast at 4.30 a.m. Because a podcast goes out on a Wednesday, that's just fucking how it is. No exceptions, I put a podcast out on a Wednesday. But why am I doing it at 4.30 a.m? because I'm already experiencing burnout from the few gigs I've done this month already. I'm already experiencing that burnout.

So for a lot of today, I couldn't work. I needed to wear incredibly comfortable clothes and I needed to pace up and down and flick my fingers and speak to absolutely nobody so that I could bring myself to sit down and work because there was no way that was happening earlier. planning, scheduling, initiating tasks

these things are difficult for me at the moment more than fucking difficult, impossible and that's, I'm saying that because that's what it is to be an autistic person and I'm very good at hiding all of that shit a great way that I hide it is I wear a plastic bag on my head so I can go for walks on my own and nobody even looks at me, no one knows who I am

no one gives a shit, I'm nobody, no one's going to recognise me no one's going to want to have a conversation with me And that is essential to my mental health. Before I knew that I was autistic, I used to speak about mental health all the time. I used to speak about all these different tools that I have to avoid anxiety, to avoid depression. Now I realize I was speaking about autistic burnout.

When a noradivorging person experiences burnout. And I experience burnout when I experience burnout when I experience burnout when I, engage in behaviours that over-stimulate me specifically. Someone else might get overstimulated by bright lights, loud noises, not me, I'm cool with that stuff. I get over-stimulated by human interaction and small talk. Okay, it's that simple. It doesn't come to me as instinct. It's effort-based.

It takes a lot of my social battery is taken up. And then the consequence of that is burn out and then followed by what's called executive disfunction. Lots of executive functioning skills. Executive functioning skills, I don't like the word, makes it sound like robots. It's difficulty with inhibitions. So inhibitions there for me can be if I experience an anxious thought or a depressed thought, my capacity to regulate my emotions are reduced. So the anxious thought can then spiral into the experience of anxiety. See, when I'm not burnt out and I'm looking after myself, an anxious thought comes in, then I can analyse it critically and go, there's no reason to get anxious about that.

Let's look at it differently. When I get barn out, that becomes difficult, so then I'm dealing with anxiety. Then another thing that happens when you lose executive functioning. My working memory, my memory becomes fucking terrible. I don't respond to people's texts. I forget very, very important things. This only happened once and I never let it happen again, but I once forgot a sold-out gig, lads.

It was about 2018. I had a sold-out gig up in fucking Dublin, and I forgot to show up, and there was people sitting in the fucking audience. And I'm back in Limerick because I forgot about a gig, because I was in severe burnout. I forget to pay an important bill. I will open emails that are mad important.

I won't answer them, and then when you don't answer emails, just spirals and spirals. I self-flagelate and I experience deep shame and angry voices come in and I start regressing to being a child and calling myself stupid and useless and I can't clean my fucking space and the ocarinas, I was tripping over ocarinas as I know that sounds eccentric and mental and it's funny, I get it, but it's my life. I was tripping over ocarinas and I had to put them away. I hide my autistic behavior because the price is social shame. That's the fucking price of being

autistic, it's no crack. A lot of autistic people are complete loners and don't have friends groups or a lot of friends. We do that by choice. It's not worth the hassle a lot of the time. We're better off by ourselves. I've got family. I've got family who I can be around and who I can unmask around these people. Very close family where I don't have to feel judgment and I can walk around them with a fucking 3xl giant fucking cotton track suit. I can talk without making eye contact. I can gleefully rant about whatever subject I'm researching that day and I can stim. I can, I've calluses on my hands from rubbing them together so vigorously. I rub my hands together all the time. I pace back and forth constantly. I need to do that stuff because that's how

my nervous system, which is the relationship between my brain and my body, that's how my nervous system regulates as an autistic person. I only do that around very close family and one or two very, very close friends. Everyone else have to hide that shit and throw on my neurotypical performance where I don't do that stuff and I suppress it. And it's not pleasant. It's like holding in a giant fart. That's what it's like. Holding in a massive fart. The reason that's an apt metaphor is Have you ever had to hold in a giant fart Like a fucking huge one, right?

And someone walks into the room and asks you a question And you having a clue what they just said Or what they just asked you Because all of your effort is about holding in this fart And now they've left the room You do your fucking fart, you feel okay And it's like, I don't know what the fuck they just said to me I didn't listen to anything they were saying

being autistic is a bit like that having to mask thinking about body language thinking about eye contact tone of voice all of that effort and cognitive load is like holding in a massive fart and then you're not paying attention

that comes with consequences consequence I don't have a leave insert lads that was the consequence for me because that's what school was broadcasting a clip on television not editing it out broadcasting that clip before two people are having a discussion about the validity of my actual diagnosis,

like I'm an autistic person, that just creates stigma. It frames autism as this bandwagon that could be jumped on and claimed. It sends the message out to autistic people like me who are watching. It reinforces our shame and it pressures autistic people to conceal being autistic rather than to disclose it safely to people. The goal of autism awareness is to get to a point in society where if an autistic person doesn't want to make fucking eye contact in a conversation that that's actually okay.

Or if they're twiddling their fingers or pacing in the middle of a conversation that this becomes so understood that it's just, it's normal. It wasn't normal when I was in school. I'd to sit down all day. tapping my fucking feet I used to the shit I used to do in school that I'd framed as misbehaving and now I realised that it was

artistic behaviour I used to so I'm a sensory seeking person so if I'm in a stimulating environment if I can listen to music if I can have headphones on my music then I can feel okay

in that environment I'm emotionally regulated I feel safe and calm. The same way that the neurotypical people around me just feel safe and calm as a base level, but for me, I'm overstimulated when I'm around loads of people. So when I was in school, I used to always just have a walkman, hidden underneath my desk, and I would hide the wire up my fucking sleeve,

and I had a way of leaning on my hand on the desk so that at all times one little earbud was sticking into my ear and I was hearing music. And that was the only way that I could put up with being in class and most importantly, fucking pay attention to my schoolwork to pay attention to what the teacher is fucking talking about. But then, of course, the teacher would catch me and take the fucking the walkman off me

because they interpreted that as I'm distracted. How can you be listening to this geography lesson if you're also listening to music with one ear and it's like no you don't get it I can actually concentrate because I'm listening to this music

they didn't fucking hear that get the fuck out of the class I got suspended more than once for refusing to wear my uniform now I'd framed that as I was just a bold little cunt and I didn't want to be the same as everyone else and I didn't want to wear this no it wasn't

I was experiencing the fabric of the uniform as painful. Autistic brain sense. The processing of sensory things is different. So for me, now I'm not crazy overstimulated by fabrics, but it was obviously enough that I couldn't wear my school uniform. I would just not wearing the jumper. Forget about it. I would feel as if when I used to have to wear that fucking jumper, you might as well have to. poured a lot of ants down my back. That's what it was like. And I wasn't learning shit.

I just wanted to, I'd grip my teeth, I'd want to leave. So I used to wear my hoodie over my shirt because that was acceptable to me. But I got suspended more than once because it was just no amount of giving out to me, no amount of telling me not to do it. I just kept doing it. I kept doing it. Because I had to, because I was going nuts if I wasn't. I couldn't wear that fucking jumper.

Now as an adult, the clothes that I wear private, the clothes that I'm wearing right now, I just would not step outside the house in them. I have to wear 4xL cotton track suit pants, 4xel hoodie, and these ridiculous orthopedic crocs. And I wear these things because when I'm wearing them, I just feel normal, I feel like me.

That's why I wear these things, I feel like me. But I'm not taking that outside. When I'm in my office and work, I wear these clothes in the office but when I go down to the canteen to get my lunch I put on my outdoor clothes I put on my neurotypical clothes

that are uncomfortable just so I can be around people because I'm not going to be around people in a 4XL cotton track suit pants with ridiculous fucking crocs because it's not worth the stairs and the rejection that go along with that it's just not worth it

there's nothing worse than a stranger looking at you that way I still experience social rejection and it's not nice. And if an artistic person wants to live completely within their needs, so for me, if it was like big giant baggy tracksuit and crocs and that's just, and huge headphones listening to music all the time, not looking anyone into the fucking eyes, twiddling my fingers, pacing up and down.

Who's that fucking lunatic? Let's have a laugh at him, let's have a giggle. He's not welcome here, we'll communicate that with our disgust and body language. So I do none of that shit. I fucking mask. I mask. I play by the rules, I play by the fucking rules, force eye contact, for small talk, wear the uncomfortable clothes, do all of this, try and keep it to a manageable amount of time and then I just can't

wait to go and be myself where I'm not judged either by myself or around some trusted close people who don't give a fuck. So because I'm diagnosed, legally I'd be recognized as having a disability. I don't experience it as a disability. The way that I, my personal understanding of autism as it relates to my individual experience, I don't experience it as a disability. It's much, it's much more closer to how gay people talk about being gay. What I mean by that is, I've spoken to loads of gay people. Ask him about being gay. It's like, I'm just a person. I'm just, I'm just a person. I'm a lad, right? And everything about me is. is like I'm just a fucking person.

I just happen to be attracted to other lads. That's it. But I like snooker and video games and all that stuff. It's pretty boring really. But then when the gay person speaks about their experiences growing up, they're like, well, I had to hide being gay, I was afraid of being bullied, I had to change the way I spoke, the way I walked,

I had to suppress certain mannerisms. And then when I hear that, I go, oh, that has nothing to do with being gay. That's homophobic. All right, okay, so the problems that you face are absolutely nothing to do with being gay at all. It's all of this is homophobia. It's other people and society deciding that what you're doing is wrong. And that is what's created your problems.

So that for me is what autism is like. If I want to be myself, it comes with a massive, massive price. And that price is social rejection, labeling, being called eccentric, mad, and upsetting strangers just by being me and as a child I was screamed at enough times for fucking flicky fingers are

monologuing on facts whatever the fuck you learn this shit at a very very young age like a puppy who's been slapped on the nose and the shitty thing but by air in that clip

my autism is called into question because I've been too good I'm too well-trived trained. I've learned to hide it so much that it's okay to call into question my diagnosis on fucking on TV with money, money that comes from the taxpayer on a show that's supposed to normalize autism and to make autism acceptable and they've done the exact opposite. And the other thing too, the Virgin Media, and this is why it's so it's baffling to me because I make television

I can't understand how this has happened. Like, where's the oversight? This isn't just about increasing stigma for autistic people. I think they've actually violated the broadcasting. So there's a thing called Commission the Man. It used to be the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. And this TV show The Assembly, a lot of the funding. for that TV show, I think, comes from Commission the Man, so that's TV license money.

And there's really strict broadcasting and editorial guidelines. So like Principle Five, you don't, you have to, you don't prejudice respect for human dignity. So if you, if you broadcast a clip about me, a public figure, and you're calling into question my diagnosis, that's not provided me with dignity there. You're taking my dignity away. Another clause is around incitement and harm, so you can't broadcast abusive or likely to stir up hatred, including around disabilities. It certainly stars up erasure. It stars up the idea that even if a person is diagnosed as an autistic person, that it's okay to call that into question. If that person isn't behaving or, it's, in a way that's,

that a neurotypical person considers to be artistic enough. The clauses around disability are, that you can only emphasise disability when the references are justified, right? So, I don't know what the editorial justification is to question the diagnosis of a fucking, a public figure who's autistic.

I don't know what that editorial, I don't see the, the only justification I can see is that it made really good clickbait to share as a clip to advertise the program, which was then deleted from social media when loads of people complained in the comments. But they left it into the final show. So there must have been, I'd love to know

what the editorial justification was for that. So those are very basic. It's written there. It's in the commission, the man, code of program standards, right? And I know this stuff because I have a production company. make television. These are the guidelines that make it difficult to make TV because you have to follow these guidelines if you want to broadcast something on Irish TV and I'm pissed off

at the fact that Virgin Media just put me in a position there where I basically have to justify why I'm autistic, where I have to go despite what I saw on TV, no, no actually I am, which I shouldn't have to do because that there removes my dignity. That's the bitter her own dignity. That's not fair. I'd enough fucking dignity, dignity taken off me by the school system. And ever since I got out of school and was able to become self-employed and to find ways of earning a living that work for me, that was regaining my dignity. That's what that, this podcast gives me fucking dignity. Being able to have a job where I can explore my curiosity and passions and write books

and lean towards the joy, artistic fucking joy listening to music creating things researching experiencing long states of flow and concentration connecting things that don't seem connected and finding hidden meanings

that's all joy that's that gives me deep meaning it makes me thrilled to be alive it gives me dignity being able to succeed at it and then get rewarded for being good at it. That's all the exact opposite of being back in school, being told that I'm disruptive and useless and worst of all believing that and not really understand them what was going on.

It was in my mid-30s before I reappraised. All those times you were suspended for not wearing a school jumper. And then going, fuck, that's what that was. I just thought I was a little cunt and I wasn't even going to bother mentioning this shit it's just that when I saw some of the complaints there was people

people saying that they had gotten a diagnosis because of listening to my podcast and then other autistic people and parents of autistic kids saying that listening to my podcast and me being public about my autism has helped their children feel

okay to be who they are And that struck with me because it reminded me of my dad. My dad was very good with me when I was a little child. And we knew that I was different. But my dad always framed it as good things. That I was really smart. He used to call me a genius. I'd be coming home from school getting called stupid.

And then I'd be sitting by myself reading my books, reading encyclopedias. And he'd come to me and he'd say, you could do anything you want with that brain that you have. And then when I got older, when I, you know, like it'd be a 12 or 13, I'm in secondary school, he'd say to me, you know, you remind me a bit of your great-grandfather. You know, your great-grandfather was like you.

No, I don't think my dad knew my great-grandfather very well. He was an older man. My great-grandfather would have been born. Jesus, fucking 1880. Like, I come from a long line of men who had children. very old. My dad was 50 when he had me. But my dad would say, yeah, your great-grandfather. He used to say my great-grandfather. He had a small little farm, and he used to let the farm go to shit. Nothing would get done because he'd spend all his time sitting under a tree

writing poems, and he'd say that my great-granddad, this isn't the fellow who was in the IRA now, this is the fellow who would have been, he was, he was a poet. lunatic and then all his sons were like proper fucking IRA get shit done fight the Brits but my great-granddad

was a dreamer a weirdo and my dad said he'd sit under trees and write poetry but what he also used to say was your granddad was like an encyclopedia people used to call to him

to want to find out facts because he would read all the time and he'd know everything. everything about the world. And he'd tell me, he told me one particular story and it was the most beautiful visual image. And this is the bit that's pure fucking artistic. So my great granddad's farm was on a road and this road was on the way on the way to a creamery. Now this could have been like 1910. So the road was on the way to the creamery and everyone would bring their charns of milk on horseback down to the creamery. Because you're bringing.

the milk to the creamery and then they'd turn that into butter for you. And my great-granddad would stop everybody on the road and he'd either read his poetry or he used to get a stick and he'd draw the countries on the ground in the dart and tell people the history of the world by drawing out these countries with a stick. Doing a podcast really, just doing a podcast but in 1910 on the side of the road to all these people on the way to the creamery. But the image my dad gave me was that The people on the way back from the creamery used to take their horses and go over ditches to avoid him

because they'd be coming back from the creamery and they'd have all the butter, the butter that would just been made in the creamery. They used to pack that in the horse's shoulders, in around the leather, the bridle, whatever the fuck you call it, they'd put the butter in there. And if they came back and my great-granddad went on one of his rants

talking about the history of the world or reading his, poetry. If they stayed there too long, the butter would start to melt down the horse's chest. Because my great-granddad would be on some big long monologue about the history of the world. With all this curiosity and knowledge that he wanted to give people, but they were avoiding him. And now I look at that, that's pretty autistic. Because it's like he doesn't care, he's gone on this monologue anyway, because he needs to get it out of his system. But my dad would say that to me, he'd go, you know, I think you're a bit like that great-grandag. grandfather, you're a bit like him. He was well known down in West Cork for his stories and for his

general knowledge and he was the man you'd go to if he needed the answer to a question. But when my dad would say that to me, I'd feel proud and I'd feel normal and I'd feel happy to be me. Even though I didn't, I didn't have a diagnosis or anything, I just knew that my, my curiosity and my way of being was a liability. It was creating fucking problems for me. But I thought of that when I heard when I seen comments from parents saying that their kids feel normal because of me and that made me very annoyed obviously then with that editorial decision. I don't even think it was a decision. I think it was carelessness.

And the big reason I was hesitant about fucking mentioning this is if a complaint was brought to the commission of the man, right? Or if it got into the newspaper. The newspaper is going to report on it. and use my real name. Because that's what they fucking do. No matter how many times I ask them to not do it, they do it just for fucking clicks.

And it pisses me off because I say, number one, I say, please don't use my real name because privacy is actually an autistic accommodation for me. I'm not just a private person. Privacy and being able to live a normal life is very important

to me as an autistic person. So that's why I've got the bag on my head. and that's why I used the pen name Blind by. That's why I'm fucking Blind by Boat Club. That's a pen name. And I say to them, why the fuck does Bono get to be Bono? When have you ever seen Bono?

Bono is just Bono. Doesn't matter what the fuck he's doing. When have you ever seen his real name printed? Never. Fucking Bruno Mars. I'm not comparing myself to Bruno Mars and Bono, but I'm just saying. Bruno Mars' name is Peter. Do you ever see him called Peter?

Sting is called Garden. And like, everyone who's in, an entertainer and uses a pen name, their real name is a matter of public record, but just the media don't respect mine for some fucking reason, even though I say to them, can you just be sound because it's an autism thing?

Can you just let me be blind by, please, for fuck sake, because I live in Limerick and having just a quiet fucking life where I can go to Aldi and just not have someone try and talk to me, that's all I want, that's all I fucking want. To pick and choose those moments,

to pick and choose when I want to behave norotypically and for me to have some control over when that happens. And the other thing is well about broadcasting that. It's not just when you broadcast something, when you make a piece of television and you have editorial control,

you have a due diligence. Not to just me who's sitting at home looking at the telly and I'm being mentioned. It's a due diligence to the guests. You've made your guests look like a pair of pricks too now. That's why I'm stressing to ye who are listening. The two people speaking, Phil and Ryan Tuberty, they did nothing wrong. I wouldn't give a shit if I heard that in a pub. They made an Irish mammy joke, which was really funny and it was anecdotal and it's grand.

All right, I'll be back next week. I have a very, very fantastic and interesting guest next week on the podcast. I can't wait to show you that. In the meantime, rubber dog, genuflect to a swan, wink at a snail. Dog bless.