The Blindboy Podcast - Chicken Fillet Rolls

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

After many requests, here's a podcast about Chicken Fillet Rolls Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello you cube-shaped Rubens. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Let's begin this week's podcast with a little poem. A poem that was sent in to us by Louis Tomlinson, formerly of One Direction. The poem is called I Tilted My Head. One day, five years ago, I noticed a smell on the collar of my shirt So I tilted my head to sniff the collar I won't bore you by telling you what happened But I will give you instructions on what you should do if you notice a smell on the collar of your shirt

Tilt your head to one side Snort your collar. Inhale deeply. Don't stop until the collar of your shirt is taut with your nostrils. Keep sucking in. Inhale your shirt in its entirety. This may take up to seven hours. You are now wearing your shirt inside your chest. Thank you very much, Louis Tomlinson, for that poem. I tilted my head. Thank you very much. That was a pleasure to read out.

I hope you're doing well. I hope you're doing well, Louis. So what's the crack? How are you, everyone? Welcome to this podcast. If you're a first time listener Go back to some earlier episodes Swim around in the podcast

Swim around in it, that's what I'd say Treat the Treat the back catalogue As a dell or a brook You know And you can't swim in a brook, can you? A brook would be a bit not a lake because it's not

treat the podcast like a fucking a clean pond a man made pond and just swim around in it alright by which I mean listen to some earlier episodes please if you're a regular listener what's the crack how you getting on I got shit sleep last night

because just as i was drifting off to sleep i learned a bizarre a bizarre fact right so in 1956 when they were having the olympics in australia um so do you know you know when you have the Olympics in a country, they do this ritual where the Olympic torch, which is like just this torch that's on fire, I think they light it in fucking Greece or something, and it's literally carried to the host country for the opening ceremony. So in Sydney in 1956

they somehow somehow I don't know how it happened they got confused with the Olympic torch right so what they thought

was the actual official Olympic torch turned out not to be the Olympic torch at all. So some lad was running with this flaming torch. Thousands of people lined the streets of Sydney, cheering him on. There was a police escort.

This lad running with the fucking Olympic torch. He gets to the opening ceremony, hands the torch to the mayor. And it turns out it's not the Olympic torch he gets to the opening ceremony hands the torch to the mayor and it turns out it's not the Olympic torch at all it was a set of flaming underpants on a stick so that happened

1956 the Australian Olympics they temporarily mixed up the official Olympic torch with a set of flaming underpants on a stick soaked in kerosene so i'm not sleeping after hearing that heard that last night about 12 o'clock ready to go to bed and then i stumbled across that fact on the internet and i said well fuck that i'm not sleeping i'm not sleeping after hearing that because of the just the logistics of

it how the fuck does that happen and And I couldn't find enough information. About how that happened. Was it a prank? You know. Was it deliberate? Like. So that's. This week's podcast is not about that.

I considered doing a podcast about it. But there wasn't enough information. I suppose I kind of just missed Australia. As well. I liked hearing a story about Australia because this time last year I was preparing for my Australia and New Zealand tour um it was supposed to be Australia New Zealand and Thailand but the gig in Thailand I had to cancel because I had a little bit of a sore throat and there was this brand new mystery illness coming out of China and I just felt that if I'd have

flied to Bangkok airport because I was sick this time last year they'd have quarantined me. So I cancelled Thailand. But yeah, I miss Australia. I miss the little things I take for granted. Do you know what I want? Do you know what I want? Do you know what I want?

If I'm thinking of everything that's been taken away from me now with this pandemic, I can't even go to the gym. You know what I mean? And I'm locked inside. And it's been like this for a year. And I'm coping. I'm dealing with it. But the little things, the simple things,

like what I crave right now more than anything if i had a vision of what what could i do right now in a pandemic free world i would like it to be six in the morning in sydney and i would like to on an empty stomach run bare chested through the sydney Botanical Gardens as the sun comes up. Running through there with the morning dew and the mist, the mist in the air, the smell of fucking orchids and palm trees, stepping over lizards, saying hello to geckos, nobody around and the sun coming up. And Sydney Harbour.

And doing that for a solid hour. Like 10 kilometres. And then once that's done. Back to my hotel. Have a shower. And then go for a lovely chilled out fucking breakfast. That I've earned. Because I just did a 10 kilometre run and I'm starving.

And no fear of social distance. No fear of human distance no no fear of human beings standing close to people in the queue and i suppose in a way i'm kind of in a way i kind of have to be thankful of coronavirus for that there's there's a way of living called asceticism i've spoken about it it before. Where it's kind of associated with Buddhism. Where you deny your body pleasures. And I've been denied, all of us have been denied so many freedoms because of coronavirus. That I have to say to myself, isn't it lovely?

Isn't it nice? That the thing I crave the most. Is not like material things. It's not great riches. I just want the humble simplicity. Of a run. In a place that I consider to be beautiful. And that's genuinely what I want to do the most.

So I'm kind of thankful for that. I'm thankful for that. I'll fucking never take anything like that for granted again. You know what I mean? So I'm kind of thankful for that. I'm thankful for that. I'll fucking never take anything like that for granted again. You know what I mean? And so I am... That's a positive. That is a positive. We've all done a year of asceticism. We've all done a year of...

Like, within... Most major religions kind of have it, you know? I'm not against religion I'm against I don't like when religious people take rules from their religion and try and use that to control other people's lives

but that's a minority religion for most people is just it's a way for it's a way for some people to get a sense of meaning in life and to live with a sense of direction and purpose

and I've no problem with that and a lot of the major religions they include some degree of asceticism you know christianity has lent uh islam has ramadan i mean it's basically like take a lot of shit you enjoy out of your life so you don't take them for granted and you can experience them spiritually again. Denying yourself material things, pleasures of the senses, and denying yourself these things so that your desires and needs become much more humble and existential. Like, what I'm craving there is a spiritual experience. Running through botanical gardens.

For me it's a spiritual communion. With nature and my sense of self. And I knew it when I was doing it. I knew it when I was doing it. You can't pay for this. You can't buy it. It's a pure here and now spiritual. Existential experience that I get

when I was running through the botanical gardens and when I'm on my deathbed it's one of those things that'll come into my mind when I'm dying that'll be one of the things that flashes before my eyes when I'm thinking about my life and I know it will because I felt it when I was doing it I'm like this is peak living

whatever the fuck life is this is it right here running bare chest through the sydney botanical gardens so thank you coronavirus for that you fucking prick you bastard so what am i going to talk about for this week's podcast um but what i wanted to do was answer a few questions. I wanted to answer a few of your questions. So here's something I've been noticing. Here's something I've been noticing. Over the past year, probably because of the pandemic,

the Irish podcasting space has become... It's changed. As in the way more people in Ireland are listening to podcasts and it's become more mainstream the audience for podcast has become more mainstream in Ireland over the past year um what do I mean by that people who used to listen to the radio now listen to podcasts when I started this podcast now i was late to the game i started this podcast in late 2017 early 2018 and i was quite late to the game because there's been irish podcasts like irish history podcast i've been listening to that since about 2011 and i got

involved in 2018 but when i got involved in podcasts it was still quite a niche space there wasn't really any big Irish podcasts and what attracted me to the podcasting space was utter creative freedom a creative freedom that didn't exist in mainstream spaces like radio television the music industry which I've been working for 10 years. So podcasting was like... My kind of opinion was with podcasting, so with mainstream entertainment, it's people who want to be spoon-fed their entertainment. They don't necessarily want to seek out something.

They want to sit back and be entertained. So mainstream entertainment then, it's very watered down so you can appeal to a wide range of people. That's no fun if you're an artist. I'm a 100% artist, so I don't like compromise. I don't like making something that's watered down. I want to truly, deeply love the work that I'm doing and be passionate about it. With podcasts, especially

three years ago, if someone is listening to your podcast, they've made a choice to do this, they know what they want and this person isn't being spoon-fed. This is someone who is coming directly to the source and saying, I'm here to consume the art that you're making so for me that's fucking ideal because I'm like class because this is what I want to make and I don't want to compromise and you're sitting down here listening to it this is what you want let's go I fucking love it you can't do that in mainstream spaces and podcasting in Ireland was like that for a while. But then the past year now, it's become a lot more mainstream. I remember, like, I remember, Jesus lads, even in early 2019, I'd post on Facebook, check out this week's podcast,

and I'd get a lot of comments from people going, what's a podcast? So podcasting has become a lot more mainstream. People who would have been listening to Today FM, 2FM listening to whatever the fuck the DJs are talking about now they're going I'm going to check out the Irish podcast charts and a lot of them have come to my podcast and they like it and they listen more than welcome

but some of them are just like you're boring the stuff you talk about is shit and that's fine it's like grand go back to the radio so this isn't for you i'm not going to change it but a lot of the requests that i'm getting for my podcast i'm getting a lot of people specifically asking me to talk about chicken fillet rolls teenage discos and Lynx Africa and these three things kept popping up

I'm like who the fuck who are all these people that are like I listened to that podcast you did last week about performance art. It was good, but could you talk about teenage discos? Or I liked that podcast you did last week about the history of Christ's foreskin, but can you talk more about chicken fillet rolls? And more and more of these requests were coming in. And I was kind of resisting them.

I was resisting them and going. Because look. Chicken fillet rolls. Lynx Africa. Teenage discourse. These topics. These are. These are hugely discussed topics within mainstream discourse.

If you want to hear someone talking about chicken fillet rolls. You'll hear it on the fucking radio. You'll hear it on TV. These are. These are. these are well spoken about topics we don't necessarily need more people talking about these things and i was i was resisting it right it's a bit like when you if i hear a new artist and I absolutely hate it it means I secretly like it and I'm just not ready to admit it yet

so all these people were asking me speak about chicken fillet rolls speak about teenage discos, blah blah blah and I was like no, not doing that that's not what my podcast is about I'm making podcasts to get the fuck away from that territory because that's like what my podcast is about i am i'm making podcasts to get the fuck away from that

territory because that's like someone saying to me play horse outside that's what that's like i'm trying to get the fuck away from that so i can have a so i can so i can i want to do podcasts about the stuff we don't talk about the stuff we don't think about i want to find the hot takes i want to read between the lines so i don't want to do podcasts about chicken fillet rolls but i couldn't stop thinking about it i couldn't stop thinking about it and then i started saying to myself am i being an elitist hipster cunt by refusing to acknowledge chicken fillet rolls links africa am i being an elitist hipster cunt? And I'm like, you know what?

You are blind, boy. You're being an elitist hipster cunt. So, I'm going to talk about fucking chicken fillet rolls this week. I'm going to talk about chicken fillet rolls. And if we have time, I'm going to talk about Lynx Africa and Teenage Disco's. You know, I think this is going to be a bit of a long take, so let's get the ocarina pause out of the way right now. Okay.

Here is the ocarina. 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. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what?

Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who did that?

The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone.

Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. That was an ocarina. You probably heard an advert for something in there. I'd know what it was about. Support from this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page.

Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBoyPodcast. This is a 100% fully independent podcast. Alright? It's independent so I can have full creative control i'm beholden to nobody i'm beholden to no advertiser this is my full-time job it's how i earn a living i fucking love it i love every minute of it i love making the podcast fee i love delivering it to you if you're a regular listener to the podcast if you're enjoying this and i'm providing you with some entertainment or solace in your day just consider paying me

for the work that I'm doing all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast if you can't afford that don't worry you can listen for free but if you can't afford it you're paying for somebody who can't afford it so everybody gets a podcast and I earn a living what more can I want and I don't have to fucking get on to RTE

and make documentaries about chicken fillet rolls instead I can do it here on my podcast alright follow me on twitch twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast i'm on every thursday night um having mad crack you can come and chat to me so let's get let's get hot lads let's get hot with some hot chicken rolls because i've got some blistering takes so let's talk chicken fillet rolls what is a chicken fillet roll? If you're Irish, living in Ireland, you know exactly what a chicken fillet roll is.

If you're not from Ireland, I'm going to have to explain. It would be something which would be considered a recent national dish of Ireland. It's not just a piece of food. It's a piece of food that when you mention it, it causes debate. So it has this, quite simply, it's a French baguette. It's a fried chicken, fried breaded chicken breast, which can be plain or spicy. Then maybe some lettuce, butter or mayonnaise even saying that even just saying that

in a group of Irish people immediately starts a debate because everybody the thing with a chicken fillet roll is it can be whatever you want it to be I've just given a standard here's what it definitely has it's French baguette

crusty and breaded chicken which is either plain or spicy those are the two definite ingredients after that it comes down to personal tastes you know i i even tweeted man i tweeted this is what i consider to be a basic chicken roll and it's got shit tons of quote tweets of people going no I put onions in it, I put ketchup in it other people put lettuce in it some people don't want mayonnaise

instead they want brown sauce so it's it's what could be considered currently a national snack or dish of Ireland which not only is a tasty food stuff like you won't find someone as well who doesn't like chicken fillet rolls like there's even vegan chicken fillet

rolls which you can only get up in Dublin but like it like it's it's not just a an important food stuff a lunch item we say it's it's a meme. It's a meme. It carries weight. It has cultural value to it. And this is why to speak about the chicken fillet roll is a cliche. Chances are, if you're an Irish person listening to my podcast, you're trying to get away from listening to people talking about chicken fillet rolls. Because everyone is talking about chicken fillet rolls because everyone is talking about chicken fillet rolls.

Like on Irish TikTok, chicken fillet rolls are the biggest cliche. Chicken fillet rolls and the song Come Out Ye Black and Tans, those are the two things on Irish TikTok that are just the most basic cliche. But how can I, as someone who's interested in culture, I can't turn away from a chicken fillet roll. I eat chicken fillet rolls.

I like them. They're delicious. They're fantastic. My personal chicken fillet roll. Very basic. What is it? Spicy chicken. Bread.

Mayonnaise. Grated cheese. That's all I want. Maybe lettuce. Maybe. Sometimes I don't trust deli lettuce. It can be a harbinger of bacteria. Especially in the summer.

But how can I not inquire and ask and give significance and importance to a sandwich that not just exists as a sandwich, but is a crucial part of Irish identity in 2020? So I now have to ask questions about what is it about the chicken fillet roll and that it carries such cultural significance that it's so memefied what is it about it and why is it so special and what does it say about our current irish identity that a fucking chicken sandwich is such a huge topic that you can bring up and discuss. Almost, almost up there with pints.

You know, you can talk about pints, lovely big creamy pints. People will speak about chicken fillet rolls in the same way that they'll speak about pints. So you have to begin by acknowledging that ireland really doesn't have a food culture we don't have a historical food culture okay you're going to have the odd regional dishes up in dublin you've got coddle which is like boiled sausages limerick we've got packet and tripe cork they've got trishine but these are these are foods that you eat when you call around to your grandmother you know people really en masse the people of Cork and Limerick in Dublin aren't consuming these foods every single day they're like heritage foods that we pretend to eat all the time but we

don't now compare that with Spain or Italy where average everyday people are truly engaging in in their fucking culture food is part of their culture it's it's part of their identity and culture and they have many many different ingredients and items and foodstuffs we don't have that in Ireland all right we simply fucking don't not when you compare it to other countries and cultures we simply don't have that in Ireland alright we simply fucking don't not when you compare it to other countries and cultures we simply don't so why don't we have a food culture you can't overstate the famine right

you can't overstate the famine and British rule the Irish potato famine of the 1840s right the British forces that colonised and controlled Ireland exported all our wheat

and barley and carrots and vegetables and meat, exported them all for profit because they were colonising Ireland and stripping us of our resources and the poor people of Ireland because they didn't have money to have access to any food subsided exclusively on potatoes for quite a long time and this was actually fine because

potatoes are an entire foodstuff the people of Ireland before the famine were actually really healthy people because you can live on just potatoes and get all your nutrients from it so for about 150 years Irish people were just eating potatoes and buttermilk and it wasn't I'm sure it wasn't nice there wasn't a lot of variety but people were healthy but if that's how a vast majority of the population are behaving exclusively eating just potatoes then you're going to lose folk knowledge you're going to lose recipes in the same way that you lose access to the ingredients of those recipes also as well you have to remember things like the penal laws where for the average Irish peasant you're not getting access to education or the ability to write and keep recipes

so I'm sure a lot of shit got lost. Now, another thing that's important with why doesn't Ireland have a food culture, historically, and I asked an expert about this before, because I used to think it was just a famine. It wasn't. Because historically, we've always had ready access to fresh ingredients. Now I'm not talking about the British getting rid of carrots and exporting wheat and barley. Even before that, we as a country had consistent access to fresh ingredients. Fertile soil, you can grow your wheat, you can grow your barley. When you have fresh ingredients or fresh

meat you don't need to preserve it so in like the likes of spain and italy preservation of food because of the weather was a much larger part of how they ate so if preservation of food to keep it from going off is part of that culture then you're going to have a lot more pickling you're going to have salting you're going to have drying you're going to have all these things we never actually needed that because we could eat fresh food and fresh food is really tasty and really nice so when you have loads of fresh food you just eat the fresh food and you don't over prepare it create create a lot of recipes. So that's another reason that Ireland doesn't have a food culture.

We most definitely have a drink culture. We have an alcohol culture where, you know, where in Spain or Italy, people get together and socialize around food. We don't do that. We get together and socialize around alcohol. Is that healthy or unhealthy it can be healthy when you're having the crack ultimately i would view it as unhealthy i would again i'm gonna i'm pinning it on i'm pinning it on 800 years of being colonized by the brits

i know some people listen to me go always blaming the brits always blaming the brits lads they controlled the country for fucking 800 years in in a not very nice way so you kind of have to um our our drink culture i would definitely view it as as a a product of collective trauma collective trauma of of being colonized for 800 years you're going to get a drink culture out of that so what what where do chicken fillet rolls come from well you have to look i i view chicken fillet rolls in the context of ireland becoming a member of the european union so ireland became a member of the EU in 1972 and the thing is as Irish people

like 1972 we're really trying to figure out who we are as people because in 72 we're basically, the 26 counties of Ireland have independence from Britain 50 years only and we're also living in

essentially a theocracy, we didn't know who we were, it's like well the Brits ruled us for that amount of time, now they're gone fuck, who are we, what are we going to do let's just let the church rule there for a while and we'll become mad Catholics

right, that's what we're going to do, we're the saints and scholars and Ireland pre-EU was kind of economically isolated. Like the founders of the Irish Free State, the likes of Eamon de Valera, de Valera really embarked on a vision of Ireland being quite isolated. And he viewed foreign products especially anything from britain but he viewed most foreign influence on ireland as a type of corruption so ireland was quite isolated so then when in 1972 all of a sudden we're european now we're in the eu but the problem is is that we don't feel European like we're in the EU we don't feel

European like it's something we've had to hammer into ourselves certainly in 1972 no one felt European like we're on the far edge of I think of Europe as the continent I don't even look at the Brits now I know the Brits did Brexit but I don't look at the Brits as European the Brits are the Brits and Europe is that that's France Spain Germany Italy that's Europe but Ireland it's like no we're Ireland we're over here we were Britain and now we're trying to figure out what the fuck we are, but we're not European. But in 1972 we joined the EU and we now have to think about our identity. We have to think of ourselves as Europeans, which is quite difficult. And as well, we think, we traditionally think of Europeans as being quite classy and posh, even when it isn't. We traditionally think of Europeans as being quite classy and posh, even when it isn't.

Like, there's footage on the Late Late Show from about 1989 or 1990, where there's this fella on it saying, I believe that in 10 years time... No, I don't think it's the 90s, I think it was the 80s. This fella says, I believe in 10 years time that the average irish person will buy a bottle of wine the way that we consume guinness and everyone in the audience laughed the idea that irish people would drink wine because we saw wine as that's really posh expensive stuff for french people and italians that's not for us even though in France and Italy wine isn't posh or in Spain it's what regular working class people drink similarly you think of cheeses or you think of

Spanish fucking paella or chorizo or cured meats and we as Irish people are thinking this is fucking fancy posh shit this isn't for us but you go to Spain you go to Italy no it's not this is what regular working class people are eating they don't consider this posh at all because they have a well established food culture. So we have this major identity crisis where we just we know we're in the EU but we certainly do not see ourselves as European and I think we view European things as being bougie, as being better than us. Like, I still struggle with that now,

like, even when I'm in fucking Spain, you know, and I'm sitting eating with people, and I almost feel like my comfort zone is like, I feel like there's this shit-covered pig who swills on fermented barley water in the gutter. And it's just like, you eat your paella and your bread and your cured meats and your wine. You do that there. I'm just going to crawl around the gutter here with beer.

I might write a poem about it. But I'm not good enough for what you're doing. And it's ridiculous. It's this fucking ridiculous thing that I have from childhood. Where I view European-ness as being posh and fancy. Even though it actually isn't. Because they're just regular people. So there was a long journey for Irish people to start becoming comfortable with feeling...

I don't think the problem is. It's identifying as European. But also identifying as being good enough. Identifying as being on equal footing. And as valuable. And as cultured. As the people of Italy. And Spain.

And France. You know what I mean? Us having that issue. Of we're not good enough. And France. You know what I mean. Us having that issue. Of. We're not good enough. And. The thing with the EU. What the EU means.

Like I can. I can go to fucking. Any shop now. I can go into done stores. And I can buy. A chunk of French brie. For one euro. Which is insane.

That's what the EU is is you can make cheese in France and you can sell it in Limerick at the same price that you sell it in France because it's a common area economically but it was a long road getting Irish people to accept that and I vaguely remember some of it from my childhood because I was born in the 80s so I remember you know my childhood in in the early in the early 90s certain foods coming on the tv and like spaghetti bolognese like no fuck spaghetti but pizza lads pizza pizza wasn't a thing in so I'm a child I'm watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles it's 1991

what are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles eating they're eating fucking pizza I'm going what the fuck is pizza what's this and there's no internet my ma doesn't know what it is my dad doesn't know what pizza is

my brothers don't know what pizza is it's doesn't know what pizza is my brothers don't know what pizza is it's this exotic food and this is the early 90s and then on the telly around the same time as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles you start to see adverts for like goodfellas pizza do you know what I mean and now they did I tell you what we did have i tell you what we before we could buy pizzas in ireland there was french bread pizza that was the first thing that came in which wasn't pizza it was like half a french baguette with tomato sauce on it and people could buy those and i'm not saying pizzas weren't a thing i'm sure they existed at the time they just weren't part of irish discourse so in the early 90s around the same time as the turtles someone decides Ireland's ready for pizza and

on the television now you've got adverts for Goodfellas pizza and that was the first time I saw what a pizza could be on these Goodfellas pizza adverts right and I don't remember what birthday it was I was quite young and I just said to my ma because there's no fucking way like we were not getting pizzas like here's the thing like adverts for pizzas on the tv in my house growing up that would have been seen as just oh no no no that's not for us that's far too. Because pizzas were probably about four pounds, which would have been really expensive. So you daren't even talk about the pizza on the telly.

It's like, that's not for us. That's for people up in Dublin, is what my man, my dad would have said. So eventually my birthday comes around. I'm obsessed with the turtles. I'm like, I need to fucking eat a pizza. So I say to my ma, ma, please, will you get me a pizza

for my fucking birthday so she caves in and she goes to duns buys a good fella's pizza complains about how expensive it is brings the pizza home it's my fucking birthday and then she looks she doesn't know what a pizza is i don't really know what a pizza is i'm don't really know, what a pizza is, I'm a child, all I can think about, is eating it, so, she looks at the back, of the pizza box, and then it says, you gotta turn on,

the fucking oven for it, and I remember her, going apeshit, going, we are not, putting on an oven, for a fucking pizza, because this is another thing,

with Irish fucking food culture, the idea, or concept, that you would put, an oven on a meal for a pizza to my mother was fucking absurd because ovens were these incredibly expensive extravagant things and an oven went on once a fucking week if there was a roast and that was it and how my ma used to do the oven and she still does it i lads sometimes i go outside the door of my house and on top of my bin is a bag of scones right and then i have to ring my ma and i have to go ma why the fuck did you leave scones now this is happening now ma why did you leave scones on my bin what the fuck is that and she'll say to me

i i had to put the oven on for a meal so i filled the oven with scones and i have excess and now they're on your bin these are the scones that uh if you remember me my interview with spike lee from two years ago my ma who thought he was bruce lee gave me a bag of scones before I got on the airplane they were excess oven scones so the concept and idea of putting on an oven from my mother is so excessive that if the oven goes on she must make several baked goods also so that she's getting the most out of the oven so if there's a chicken in the oven in the middle shelf above that is an apple tart and below that is scones just because the fucking oven is on and i'm not wasting any heat so when i was a kid the pizza comes into the house it's a good for his pizza frozen pizza she reads the back and she goes i know it's your birthday

the oven is not going on we are not putting the fucking oven on so she fried the fucking pizza she fucking fried the pizza in a frying pan and fed me this queer mush and i don't know the difference i don't know the difference because i'm a child and i'm eating what what i've been told is a pizza okay this is the 90s lads i i this this sound i sound like a 90 year old man who was remembering rationing in Britain. And I'm like, no, this is the 90s. Nirvana were in the charts, lads. People were listening to Nirvana and we didn't know what a pizza was in Ireland. Similarly, Dalmio.

Like, spaghetti bolognese? Fuck me. And then the biggest trigger of all Romantica so there was this fucking dessert man called Romantica which is like a frozen ice cream cake and it started to appear on the TV in the early 90s and again this would come on the TV

and my man would nearly turn off the channel because it was, Romantica was an ice cream cake that would cost 10 pounds, it was in, I don't know, I don't remember exactly, it was in the region between 8 and 10 pounds, it was insanely extravagant right, so I never even asked for a Romantica. We would have gotten. The step down from Romantica was Viennetta. There would have been a Viennetta. Maybe very special occasions like Christmas. Viennetta was half the price of Romantica. But again Romantica.

That's for Dublin people. Don't even think about the Romantica. And what we used to have instead. Like if you even thought about Romantica growing up, I didn't get romantica. Like Irish mothers have this way of doing things where you ask for the nice thing, they get angry with you. And instead, they give you the homemade alternative as this act of culinary aggression. So if I asked for romanticaica because i'm looking at the adverts going this looks amazing if i asked for romantica i got this really strange irish dessert right

it used to be ice cream plain vanilla ice cream that came in a one liter how would i describe it plain vanilla ice cream in a long thin block that's encased in cardboard right so the most plainest cheapest ice cream that was probably good because we have access to dairy so it was probably good dairy ice cream but it was plain vanilla ice cream and what i would get on a sunday only was if i dare to ask for romantica she would get this long block of ice cream get a bread knife cut off a wedge of ice cream through the cardboard and then place the ice cream between the these fucking wafers. These really bland. Beige wafers. That had a hint of sweetness.

And you'd get. A little wedge of ice cream. Between these two wafers. And you'd bite into it. And there'd always be little bits of cardboard. From where the ice cream was cut out of the tube. There'd always be. I can't disassociate the taste of cardboard and picking cardboard out of my mouth

and it was between these two wafers and this was the irish dessert that you only got on a sunday now i'm convinced about this food this fucking ridiculous irish dessert was actually this was a satire on communion wafers and irish people didn't know they were doing it so everybody knows this irish dessert it's the vanilla ice cream wedge cut out cardboard in it between these two ridiculous beige wafers those beige wafers tasted like a slightly sweeter version of communion wafers and i think it was irish resistant culinary satire don't think irish people knew they were doing it but if you only have this on a Sunday and in the morning you go to mass and you have your communion wafer

and then later on you have dessert which tastes a little bit like communion wafer but sweeter there's there's a culinary satire in there that we weren't aware of that we were doing but that was the payoff with that dessert so that's the dessert you get if you ask for a fucking romantica so the food culture i grew up with was once steeped in in shame and desire and and it's the thing is too i wasn't like i'm not describing a childhood of poverty i'm not saying that like we like it wasn't like we were too poor to afford romantica, there wasn't a hell of a lot of money, I had two working parents

they could have gotten the romantica if they wanted to but it wasn't about that it was the principle like I'm sure my ma could have put the oven on more than once a week it wasn't about that, it was the principle of excess and extravagance. The extravagance of putting on the oven.

The extravagance of a fucking ice cream for a tenner. The extravagance of it. It's a generational trauma that exists in a country that had a fucking famine where two million people died. And it wasn't it wasn't really that long ago my great-grandmother was in the famine do you know what i mean so we're gonna carry on certain attitudes and beliefs and strange rules about food from that and what is extravagance and what is appropriate and all of this another tenet of food culture is, do you sit around a table and eat together? I didn't have that growing up.

We didn't do that. If you did at Christmas, maybe. But if my family were sitting around a table eating dinner, it meant someone was in trouble or there was some important information. It's like, why the fuck are we all sitting around the table? This is weird. So we didn't eat at the table we you got your food on a plate and you put it on your lap and you sat on a chair and you edit like that he's sitting around tables was christmas or going to a fucking restaurant which would happen once every two fucking years with extreme anxiety and people who sat around tables that was good room shit that's really posh posh

people sit around tables so you have a country that in in the fucking 90s up until the mid 90s has a non-existent food culture so then what happens in 1989 a company sets itself up called Cuisine de France, which is not a French company. It's an Irish company from Dublin who started off selling like French bread, French rolls, but they weren't freshly cooked. They were half cooked. So they would sell half cooked rolls to petrol stations right petrol stations and shops and then what would happen is that the shop or the petrol station would have an oven and then they would finish the cooking of the french bread in the shop and people in ireland could go to the shop and buy a big long piece of french bread and this was the bougiest fanciest shit

imaginable and it blew our brains right hot long sticks of french bread oh la la and and it's from this as well remember i said the french bread pizza that was the fanciest shit you could get was a french bread pizza which was just a bit of a french baguette caught in half with some ketchup on it and cheese in the microwave and fuck your ovens but cuisine de france basically what they were trying to do was to introduce a more european concept of food to irish people that was cuisine de france like the word cuisine wow cuisine it's french for food, how posh, right they started off with rolls

and a big turning point, and this would have been circa 1995, and this is where I think now you have to remember what's happening too in 1995 we don't have a food culture, but we do have this ridiculously

strong economy called the Celtic Tiger we were in the middle of an economic boom so by 1995 what was 1995 for me 1995 I'd have made my my confirmation would have been made so I had a few pence in my pocket I remember buying an ice cream called a Solero and not feeling shame and my man not giving out to me and a Solero was 50p which was a lot again again I'm raised on this concept that to purchase a romantic I get you kicked out of Limerick. So going to the shop and getting a Solero for 50p, and that being okay, I just remember thinking, I remember feeling like a big boy.

I remember going, I have my confirmation money and I've got 50p and I'm going to buy a fucking Solero. And it feeling a little bit more normal and okay. And also at the same time, when I was buying Soleros in 1995. I was also seeing the Cuisine de France counter in the shop. It's like what's this Cuisine de France?

What's that? As I'm looking at the Soleros. You know what I mean? So around 1995. Cuisine de France isn't just selling these French bread rolls. Now in petrol stations and shops, you start to see the first incremations of what you call the hot food counter. Now this was a new concept in Ireland. You go into a petrol station, you go into a shop, and there's this glass counter that's heated.

And inside there is food that's pre-cooked now we didn't know really wouldn't know what to fucking do with it and here's the turning point spicy potato wedges circa 1995 this new food arrives called spicy potato wedges now we're ir. We understand what potatoes are. We understand what chips are. Chips are deep fried potatoes. We know what they are. They're okay to eat as a treat. They're not extravagant. They are part of our food culture. But now I'm in a petrol station. A petrol station? In a shop in a petrol station and i'm looking at these new things called fucking wedges they're not that expensive and they're spicy potato wedges and and everyone's

just going what the fuck is this we couldn't trust it you couldn't trust the wedge irish people at first could not trust potato wedges because it it defied our boundaries and understanding of what a potato was it was inherently dishonest the potato wedge was is it a chip it's not a chip it's a potato wedge how do you make it it's made in the oven why is it orange it's spicy is that skin is that potato skin yeah we leave the skin on it now leaving, leaving the skin on it, that's a big one. One of the things with Irish people is during times of the famine, we would have eaten the skin as well as the potato.

But the closest thing to classiness in Ireland was when you removed the skin from the potato. Eating potato skin is kind of shameful now why do i know this because i remember being in tipperary in an uncle's house my ma's brothers and this is real rural tipperary now fucking bog creatures and i remember seeing my uncle reaching putting his hand into boiling hot water putting out a potato from it and eating through the skin and eating the potato like an apple

and whatever way he did it it my ma chastised him because that was that's the equivalent it was seen as unclassy it was too peasant-like in the behaviour. To reach into the pot and eat the potato with the skin like an apple was too close to famine activity.

So now you've got these potato wedges in the hot deli counter with the skin on them. And you're asking the person behind the counter why the fuck do they have skin why is there skin in the potato wedges and then they're going that's just how it is they're french it's cuisine de france they're not chips this is continental and then you buy the potato wedges and they're fucking delicious because they're spicy and you're tasting these spices you've never tasted before. And I remember eating them. And I'm like what the fuck is this? It doesn't have the crunch that chips have.

It has the softness of a boiled potato. But the skin gives it a resistance. And I've got all these new flavours in my mouth. Holy moly. And everyone in Ireland felt the same thing. With these potato wedges. Now here's my hot take about potato wedges. Human beings. Right? Now I'm my hot take about potato wedges. Human beings.

Right. Now I'm going back maybe fucking two million years. Possibly longer. Early human beings. For years and years and years. In human development. Humans didn't. Human technology.

The tools that humans were making a million years ago early humans human technology didn't change for fucking ages we were making the same axes and the same arrowheads for like a hundred thousand years then something happened

all of a sudden and there was a massive explosion of creativity and all these new weapons and tools got invented something happened like 60,000 years ago i think it was where all of a sudden there's a massive explosion of creativity and anthropologists were going why the fuck did humans make the same tools for hundreds of thousands of years and then one thing happens and there's an explosion of creativity what was the one thing that and then one thing happens and there's an explosion of creativity what was the one thing that happened the one thing that happened is that humans started

to control fire and when humans started to control fire it allowed us access to cooked meat and when we started cooking our meat more proteins were released and our brains grew and this caused an explosion of human creativity and we started to have healthier more nourished brains could think better we had bone marrow from bones because we're burning the bones and we start now inventing more tools also there's a theory that simply cooking and staring into a fire will afford a human the contemplative space that's needed for creativity. So fire did this to the human mind. I think the spicy potato wedge circa 1995 had a similar effect on the Irish consciousness and our identity. The spicy potato wedge, which is something that's kind of familiar.

It's a fucking potato it's a bit like a chip but it's not it's not because jambans were there as well I left this bit out there was jambans too now a jamban was a piece of fried pastry with cheese and tomato

that was too much, no one's fucking with a jamban in 1995, they're going to the bin only the bravest cunt's fucking with a jam ban in 1995, they're going in the bin only the bravest cunt is fucking with a jam ban in 1995 no one was touching them but we were going for the potato wedges the potato wedge was a familiar package

with just that extra little bit of spice and that extra bit of potato skin the potato wedge on the Irish mind was like early hominids discovering fire the potato wedge combined with the Celtic tiger is what made us go yum yum this is spicy I feel European that's what it was the potato wedge made us feel okay with feeling European. Feeling adventurous. Maybe I'll fucking buy the Romantica. Dalmio? What's that? Spaghetti? I'm having fucking spaghetti bolognese tonight

lads. It's 1996. Let's watch the X-Files with spaghetti bolognese. I'm having a good fella's pizza. Fuck me. It's the Celtic Tiger. I'm European. So fella's pizza fuck me it's the Celtic Tiger I'm European so we start now getting adventurous I'm fucking shoving celeros up my arse we're getting adventurous now and the potato wedge unlocked it all via cuisine de France

so to really understand the chicken fillet roll and where it comes from you have to go Celteltic tiger we're talking 96 onward 96 was a hot year for the celtic tiger the celtic tiger in ireland like i said everyone had everyone was doing well high employment and a huge amount of home ownership and a massive amount of development and things being built and a huge amount of people being employed in the construction industry. And the first ever modern Irish piece of food that we can call our own

is the breakfast roll. And the breakfast roll starts to become a thing around 1996 and it's very heavily associated with the Celtic tiger. The breakfast roll is a breakfast roll starts to become a thing around 1996 and it's very heavily associated with the Celtic tiger the breakfast roll is a fucking abomination but so cuisine the France set up these hot deli counters in petrol stations all around Ireland fucking petrol stations like this is this is what happens when you have a famine this is the Brits really did a fucking number on us

so we're petrol stations become the new places of eating in Ireland in the Celtic Tiger you have all these builders

construction workers doing hard hard fucking labour earning tons of money and their food of choice now becomes the breakfast roll which is an exclusively irish invention the breakfast roll basically is i don't know who invented it it probably happened organically about 1996 you went to the cuisine the france counter in any petrol station in ireland and you were a

builder you took the french bread the french baguette the european french baguette and inside in this you inserted two rashers two sausages two black puddings white pudding and an egg an entire full irish breakfast placed in a french baguette and this is the breakfast roll and this became synonymous with the celtic tiger builders this was the food and it was uniquely irish we invented it we invented the fucking breakfast roll now if you deconstruct the breakfast roll semiotically and you look at it in the context of the celtic tiger the fry up the fry up within irish culture the fry up which is sausages rashers eggs that's the biggest treat you can imagine the fry up as a symbol of irishness what it meant was the fry up is like what you'd eat at the end of lent i mentioned earlier about um fucking asceticism within

religions like in ireland we used to do lent so you wouldn't people wouldn't eat meat and at the end of lent you have the big fry up or the fry up is what you have on a Sunday after you've had a feed of pints it's a reward that was Irish excess, Irish excess in the 30s, 40s, 50s whatever

was the fry up so the fry up is placed within the lexicon of Irish culture as the excessive meal of celebration something that happens once a week something that happens after, the first celebration

is the drink, the feed of pints the whiskey, that's how we understand how to celebrate but the next day you have your bacon eggs rasher and that's Irish excess. So the breakfast roll via the Celtic Tiger is like, well, I'm going to have a fry up every fucking day.

And I'm European now, so I'm going to stuff the fry up into a fucking French bread. Oh la la. Because I'm a big celtic tiger boy and i'm going around with all my euros and that's what the the breakfast roll became this fry up in french bread that became the food of continual celebration continual irish celebration but wrapped within the the breakfast roll is also an expression of self-loathing the breakfast roll isn't pretty the breakfast roll is

several different fatty pork products wedged in bread and you know it's bad for you and you know it's excessive and it's also it's like you're eating a caricature of there's a there's shame in the construction and the dimensions of a breakfast roll inherently contain shame in there it's like we're eating ourselves this caricature of Irish people

as being dirty pigs dirty uncultured pigs and the breakfast roll it's all this pork with theatrical amounts of fucking ketchup on it, like blood.

And then the bread essentially becomes a gutter. So it's like you're eating a drunk Irishman covered in blood in a gutter. All this symbolism exists within the breakfast roll. And it was excessive. And it wasn't healthy. And it was kind of embarrassing, but we did it anyway. And breakfast rolls still exist, but they don't carry cultural capital anymore.

The breakfast roll was a big deal in the early 2000s, the late 90s, early to mid-2000s. It was a big deal. There was a novelty song by Pat Short called Jumbo Breakfast Roll Man. This was something that was within the lexicon. The breakfast roll, up until about 2008, as a meme, as a totem, it was the chicken fillet roll of now.

Again, it's not just a foodstuff. It's not just something you eat for breakfast. The breakfast roll had attained the iconic value that a pint of Guinness had. Do you know what I mean? A pint of Guinness isn't just a drink. A pint of Guinness isn't just a drink. Yes, it's lovely. Yes, it's a drink. It's not just a drink.

It's an icon. it's a totem it communicates meaning to other people it's a conversational point that we can rally around so guinness isn't just a drink the breakfast roll wasn't just a fucking sandwich it was an icon it communicated something and it became synonymous with the celtic fucking tiger up until 2008 And it became synonymous with the Celtic fucking tiger up until 2008. Breakfast roll is still there. People still eat them sometimes. It's lost its cultural value.

It's not important anymore. The chicken fillet roll rose from the ashes of the breakfast roll. Okay? So I went looking at Google Trends for breakfast roll and chicken fillet roll so when I type breakfast roll into Google Trends there's again a dip in a trough but a clear mention of it from I think Google Trends only goes back to 2004 but it's steadily being mentioned all the way up but there's no sharp rise as. But then when I look at chicken fillet roll. No mention until January 2008. Then a steady dip and trough from there on.

So the chicken fillet roll starts to enter public consciousness. Around 2008, 2009. As the breakfast roll declines. The breakfast roll got tarnished what happens in 2008 lads the recession the recession and the breakfast roll

when the recession the recession the Celtic Tiger officially ended in 2010 when the banks were bailed out when we think of the Celtic Tiger we think of it as a time of great excess

people did too much people were irresponsible and the breakfast roll became an icon and a totem of that excess the breakfast roll now is like don't get that mortgage

don't buy that car don't get in debt calm the fuck down don't get that mortgage don't buy that car don't get in debt calm the fuck down don't do cocaine don't get that bouncy castle you don't need decking out the back garden you don't that's what the breakfast roll means now

the breakfast roll means I had to move to Australia that's what the breakfast roll means we still eat it it's delicious but it no longer has mimetic value it doesn't carry you're not proud of the breakfast roll you're ashamed of the breakfast roll the breakfast roll to me is is I'm kind of embarrassed by it I'm gonna hide my breakfast roll you know I know it's bad for me also the breakfast roll is is we've always fundamentally understood

it as as a completely irrational meal like i remember around 2006 a buddy of mine from france called alex was over in ireland studying and me and alex used to have great crack and then one day i brought him to a petrol station and gave him a breakfast roll and this is a French man and he fucking loved it but I remember him going you guys fucking eat these for breakfast you fucking eat this for breakfast and I'm like yeah you fucking eat this for he couldn't believe it he couldn't believe this huge french baguette full of pig he just couldn't he loved it but he couldn't believe it and i remember being taken aback going fuck i haven't thought about the breakfast roll like this but this french dude

thinks that that this food stuff that he has is fucking mad he thinks it's irrational and this is a french man cuisine this is the place where fucking cuisine the france comes from and he's eating this like it's a an irrational abomination and that's the first time i really started to think critically about the breakfast roll like the breakfast roll it's chaotic it's chaotic ambition That's what it is. The breakfast roll is the Celtic tiger. Like, Alex was from France. He comes from a food culture. So people with a food culture are able to plan out food.

They're able to know what's okay, what flavors go with each other. The breakfast roll isn't that. The breakfast roll is food just thrown into bread and shouted at over and over again. That's what the breakfast roll is. It's incredibly ambitious chaos, just like the Celtic tiger. It's someone with too many mortgages. It's the banks giving out too many loans. That's what the breakfast roll is. It echoes that attitude.

And anyone on the outside is going. Chill the fuck out Paddy. Relax. What the fuck is this? And if you want to see. A far more hyper real example of this. There's a place called Barack Obama Plaza. Which is a petrol station in Offaly.

Named after Barack Obama. Again what the fuck is that? The fuck is that? The fact that I even have to say that, God help anyone listening to this who isn't from Ireland, the fact that I even have to say that. So there's a fucking petrol station in Offaly named after Barack Obama

because his ancestors came from near it. Came from a place called Moneygall. So they, so they built a petrol station and named it after Barack Obama and in this petrol station they have a fucking huge deli counter one of the greatest deli counters you've ever seen

and what they've done there is they've really taken things too far so in this place you can get a full dinner inside in a French roll. So whatever about the fucking breakfast roll. You can go in here.

And you can get a bacon and cabbage. Bacon, cabbage, potatoes and white sauce. In a fucking French roll. They've gone too far. And what fascinates me about it. And you can get a Sunday dinner. Inside in a roll. Covered in gravy. it's fucking nuts, it's insane, and I've often, like if I'm coming back from

Dublin, I'll hop into Barack Obama Plaza, now I always get a chicken fillet roll when I'm in there, because, I'll tell you why, in Barack Obama Plaza plaza there's also a supermax there so when you get a chicken fillet roll in barack obama plaza the cheese is supermax cheese so it's very unique but they have dinners in rolls and i can't walk away from that and not think about it i think what's happened localized purely in barack obama plaza is they've taken so this irish struggle to find a food culture where we make these fucking bizarre petrol station meals these bizarre petrol station sandwiches they have melded irish petrol station food culture and american frontierism because it's named after barack obama i can't go to my petrol station and get a full dinner inside in a roll because they'd

say get the fuck out you're mad but not in barack obama plaza because barack obama pl Plaza is about the American dream. So, they've taken something as fucking bog Irish as a bacon and cabbage dinner. They've taken the French roll and then the attitude of a fucking crazy Texas oil man and applied American frontierism to a roll. And now I'm staring at bacon and cabbage and white sauce inside in a fucking roll in a petrol station named after barack obama where there's a five foot tall cardboard cut out of barack obama that you can get your photograph taken beside and they sell my book there as well fucking hell the brits really did a number on us didn't they so that's a segue in a very different irrational direction

but one that's worthy of talking about because it's localized to one petrol station but the chicken fillet roll emerges from the ashes of the breakfast roll around 2008 2009 it's very closely associated with the recession okay 2010 that's when anyone who was involved in the construction industry is out of work completely and if they're not completely out of work they've emigrated to australia or canada or the uk or wherever the fuck so the core breakfast roll market are gone the lads who are on the way to the construction site with money in their pockets who want this huge calorific meal in the morning to prepare themselves for lifting blocks all day these lads don't have work or they're not around so people aren't buying breakfast rolls anymore and that period the recession was really really depressing

that was really depressing so you don't want anything that's associated with the celtic tiger because a breakfast roll would simply make you feel a little bit sad because of what it represented so in steps the chicken fillet roll from those ashes now the chicken fillet roll wasn't like chicken fillet roll was a lunchtime thing there's not a lot of breakfast people in the petrol stations because not a lot of people have jobs, people are eating breakfast

in their homes, they're eating cereal, so the breakfast market, the kind of arse of it is gone like one of the around 2015 when the recovery started to happen a little bit the one thing i used as a marker in limerick for the economy getting better was simply seeing people buying breakfast seeing people sitting down or going somewhere and purchasing breakfast to me suggested people have a little bit of disposable income so people aren't buying the breakfast roll in 2010 because no one has a job no one's leaving their gaff but there's still a little bit of a market for the chicken

fillet roll students mainly chicken fillet roll I don't associate it with people working students the chicken fillet roll was the food of people in university 2010 2011 2012 also what became very popular around that time chicken fillet rolls became something that was sold as as a cheap offer so you might get chicken fillet roll and a drink for three euro and this was aimed at students because the cuisine the friends counters in the deli counters in the petrol stations weren't doing business anymore because like i said celtic tiger's over so it's like fuck we gotta sell this shit to someone let's aim for students three quid and they can get a drink as well and from there the chicken fillet roll is

born the thing with the chicken fillet roll it's not extravagant the chicken fillet roll is austere the chicken fillet roll isn't embarrassing the chicken fillet roll is affordable like here's one thing

if you if you come across a breakfast roll for a fiver people won't complain about it but when you see a chicken fillet roll for a fiver, people won't complain about it. But when you see a chicken fillet roll for a fiver, people will complain about it.

Like, I remember about 2013, working up in RTE and going into Dannybrook Fair, which is this posh place in Dublin, and the chicken fillet roll being a fiver, and me being fucking outraged. I'm going, fuck me, a fiver for a chicken fillet roll being a fiver. And me being fucking outraged. Going fuck me a fiver for a chicken fillet roll. Are you taking the piss. Some people use. The hike of price in a chicken fillet roll. To measure how well the economy is doing.

If you're paying a fiver for a chicken fillet roll. You're saying oh the boom is back. Do you get me. So the chicken fillet roll means. Affordable. Recession food. Which. It'll fill you up it's really tasty it was comfort food and it's still going strong and that's the chicken fillet roll has it means something it's iconic it

has power now i'm trying to figure out what does the chicken fillet roll mean now like i said like everyone's talking about chicken fillet rolls everybody i i think what it means the chicken fillet roll it signifies the lessons that we learned from the celtic tiger and who we would like to be so the breakfast roll was a chaotic, ambitious abomination of excess. The chicken fillet roll is austere. You're not breaking the bank. It's got what you think is chicken breast. So in your mind you're going, chicken breast is healthy. Like here's the thing, when you eat a breakfast roll, you know that's not healthy.

But when you eat a chicken fillet roll, you think it's healthy. Because you're looking at it going, it's breaded chicken breast. It's bread. There's lettuce in here, lads. Fucking lettuce, man, that's green. So when you eat a chicken fillet roll, you think you're actually being sensible and nutritious when you eat it. The chicken fillet roll isn't showing off. You'll get spicy.

You can have a spicy chicken fillet roll. But it's still a hearty lunch. It's not visibly offensive to the eyes. A breakfast roll looks like a car crash. A breakfast roll is an act of violence. Chicken fillet roll isn't. It's nicely cut, shaped of violence chicken fillet roll isn't it's nicely cut shaped pieces of chicken fillet

and you know when you open it up it's not that messy sometimes the cheese goes somewhere chicken fillet roll is sensible I associate the chicken fillet roll with students and maybe people working in offices the chicken fillet roll with students and maybe people working in offices.

The chicken fillet roll isn't, the chicken fillet roll knows it's never getting a mortgage. The breakfast roll wants to have four mortgages. Chicken fillet roll knows it's not getting a mortgage. Chicken fillet roll wants to work in Facebook. Breakfast roll wants to build its

own gaff. Breakfast roll wants to build its own gaff breakfast roll wants to do coke chicken fillet roll might take a yoke at electric picnic maybe chicken fillet roll is proud of being Irish chicken fillet roll like you know

a lot of early chicken fillet roll aficionados circa 2009 emigrated you know they finished their degrees in college and they went to australia and they went to canada and in australia and canada they talk about the chicken fillet roll. They search for the delis that can give them the Irish chicken fillet roll and nobody can find it. They can find things that are similar but they can't find the Irish chicken fillet roll in Canada or in Australia or in America and Irish people talk about it as a point of pride. I can't wait to get back and have the chicken fillet roll. Ultimately what the chicken fillet roll represents too, it's the lie, the big lie of Ireland, you know.

It's Ireland that thinks it's prosperous, but really it relies on multinational corporations. The chicken fillet roll thinks that it's comfortably Irish and European. It's not. Like, the bread isn't fucking French. Cuisine de France isn't French. It's from Dublin. It's not French bread.

The chicken that's used in chicken fillet rolls, yes, some of it is chicken breast, but it's like mechanically farmed. It's not a full chicken breast the chicken is cheap chicken that's imported from asia a lot of it is bread a huge amount of fat in it and the greatest lie of the chicken fillet roll is the cheese that's used we all get cheese on our chicken fillet roll it's very tasty but we live in Ireland lads Ireland you know what I mean I'm talking about is not having a food culture one thing that we have in Ireland is is possibly the best dairy products in the world Kerrygold and butter like that it is fetishized the world over listen to

Yanks talking about butter the best butter to them is Kerrygold we have incredible cheese products incredible butter but the cheese on our chicken fillet roll isn't really cheese it's this weird rubbery processed shit it's like we're in Ireland why can't we have real cheddar on our

chicken fillet roll if it's so Irish so it's just it's the illusion we think we have pride in the chicken fillet roll but it's a fucking facade it's a big giant lie it's a big lie you know the chicken fillet roll is what tell me what's so good about ireland we've got google we've got facebook we've got Uber. But they're not paying any taxes, lads. They're just laundering money here. Ah, yeah, but they're providing loads of employment, like. Alright, okay, and how are you getting any of your saving

for a house? No, no. Why not? Like, my rent is a bit high. Ah, how high? You know yourself. So you're not getting a house? I don't think I'm going to get a house. Oh, how high? You know yourself. So you're not getting a house. I don't think I'm going to get a house. Alright, okay. That's what a chicken fillet roll is. You know? Holding in a loft above your shoulder with your proud Irish meal.

Made of fucking shitty chicken and rubber cheese. Champing down with a spicy belly full of lies from the forecourt of a petrol station you know what I mean? that's what the chicken fillet roll is

it's the great lie of post Celtic Tiger Ireland which we think we're proud of but how would a French person make a chicken fillet roll? they'd have the best French bread they'd have the best French cheese they'd have the best french cheese they'd have the best french chickens with the best french bread and it would be authentic and

it'd be rooted in food culture we don't have that our chicken fillet roll ultimately is it's it's a multinational corporation that doesn't pay its taxes it's us thinking we have this uniquely Irish food stuff, it's us thinking that finally we feel European but really behind it all we're not, we're just pigs covered in our own

blood rolling around in the gutter, you know what I mean so that's my hot take on chicken fillet rolls I don't, I was going to do something on lecture, I had no time to talk about fucking teenage discos now or Lynx Africa, and I won't do, I don't want to do them the lack of justice by just fucking, I'll get around to it some other podcast, I'll see what the feedback is like for this did ye like me talking about chicken fucking fillet rolls or are ye just saying to me blind bite there's enough

chat about chicken fucking fillet rolls leave it to the pros you talk about Christ's foreskin and renaissance art and leave the chicken fillet rolls to the pros alright god bless fuck off league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center 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 at torontorock.com. Thank you. Thank you.