The Blindboy Podcast - I cant describe what this one is about, you'll just have to trust my process and listen to it please

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Spanish coffee, the history of suits, dog pulled trousers, persian desserts, fairy fog Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

head over to meyarka you cautious ayes welcome to the blind by podcast if this is your first episode consider going back to an earlier episode some glorious cons even start from the very beginning to familiarize themselves with the lore of this podcast I'm recording this quite late tonight I'm sipping on coffee to keep myself alert not just any coffee My fetish is a quite disgusting Spanish coffee. It's called Tare facto. I'm a big fan of cultural scarcity. I'm the last generation to experience cultural scarcity. I grew up in a time when if you heard a song on the radio

or on an advert on television and it was the most amazing song you've ever fucking heard. If you didn't get the name of that song in that moment, you may never hear it again. and you just had to accept it you had to accept that loss or you might be staying up late at night time flicking through TV channels

because that's all you had was fucking TV and there's a film on a late night film I remember being a child would have been a Friday or Saturday night staying up way past my bedtime probably one in the morning and I flicked on the television

and there was this movie on I'd never seen anything like it the time. It was about this teenage girl who ran away from home. She came from absolute poverty in Los Angeles and then this creepy old man tries to pick her up in his car and tries to assault her but then she pulls out a gun and shoots him into the mouth and then as I watched the film I slowly realise fucking hell this is the story of little red riding hood but it's set in Los Angeles in the 90s. I was 10 or 11. This was the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my fucking life and I fancied the girl in it. I really fancied the girl in it. And then

the film was over and I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep thinking about the incredible film that I'd just seen. Thinking about the girl in it how I fancied. Thinking about the man who had his face blown open and his weird teeth. Now normally when you were watching a film there'd be an ad bray and then just before they go back to the film the announcer would say and now back to our Friday night film and they'd give you the name of it this was one in the morning they didn't do that at one in the morning they just caught straight to the ads and went back to the film so I was like this is fucking incredible no one's telling me what it's called I waited to the end

I watched the credits there was no announcer I'm like oh fuck this is gone this is gone now I can't even can go to the video shop to get a video to see this again and this is amazing it's gone what am i going to do the next day i looked for a newspaper to see i think it was channel four trying to find what was that film that was on last night nothing there was nothing i could fucking do about it we didn't have teletext there was nothing i could do about it so then i had to wait until monday morning in school and i asked everybody you didn't see that film on friday night did you get one in the morning but it was it was it was a film about this this girl she was 13 or 14 or 14

she had bland hair and she used to carry a gun around in her purse and she was really poor and she shot a fella into the face and then you realise at the end of it that it's actually red riding hood but it's set now no one had seen it

because we were 10 and no one else had stayed up till one in the morning to try and see films no one had seen it and this movie just had to live in my head as a memory

and I would lie awake and replay it in my head over and over until it became detached from what it originally was and I had to worship it like a religious item like a religious apparition and when I'd meet people I'd say I saw this fucking film once

right and it was about this and then that happened and that happened and people would listen to you because you can't pull out YouTube on your phone and look for it you had to listen to the person describe the film that they're never going to see either years later in the mid-2000s when we had the internet

and YouTube and Google I finally found the movie and it was called Freeway from 1996 starring Reese Witherspoon a teenage Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland and I watched it and it was a piece of shit It's all right

Look, it's okay, it's an okay film It's an okay film It would have been made around the time of There's a bit of Pulp Fiction in there There's a bit of boys in the hood in there There's a little bit of Bazlarman's Romeo and Juliet. The point is, when I finally got to see this film in the mid-2000s, I was let down, I was disappointed.

I wished I hadn't found this film. I wished that I'd just left it as this fantastic, wonderful memory. This wonderful memory, because when I was 10, or whatever age I was, this was incredible. I'd never seen anything like it. It was astounding. Because it was taken away, because of the scarcity of it, because I could never find out what it was.

I just made it this massive thing in my mind and then was let down when I finally found it. Same with fucking... I was about nine years of age and this Honda Civic pulled up with two hard cunts inside it, windows rolled down, blaring out, 160 BPM rave music. And they were playing this one song

and it was the hardest, fastest rave tune I'd ever heard in my life. Like at this point I'd have been listening to The Prodigy every single day and now I was hearing something faster and harder than the Prodigy. And I stopped in my tracks and I'm like, what is this tune? And I'm staring in at the car with the two boys in it. This is a stoplight. The whole thing must have lasted 30 seconds. And then the lads drove off and the tune disappears with the car and bends.

in tone with the Doppler effect and I was just, I nearly cried I'm like I need that fucking song I need to know what that song was my God and I marched into HMV in Limerick City and I marched into Empire Music which was a record shop at the time

and I was a little child and I had to go up to the counter and I had to hum I had to say to the people behind the counter I heard this song It's like a rave song. It was really fast. And it went like this.

And I would do it. So, I was really young. So I'd go into the music shop and I would hum the song for the people working in the music shop. And then they would bring their friends and go, do you know what this song is that this little boy is humming? And then they go, can you come back next week? My friend Deky knows dance music.

He's going to, and it kept happening over and over again. Now I realize they were just laughing at the humming child. Now I realized that's what was happening. But I didn't give a fuck. I was like, I need to know what this song is. And anyone you bring who's willing to listen to me who might know what this song is, the song that I'm going to hum. I don't care if you want to laugh at me.

Tell me the fucking song. I need to hear it again, please. Because it was the greatest song that I've ever heard in my life. I can't get it out of my head. And I must hear it again. maybe 10 years later I finally find the song, 15 years later possibly, finally find the song. And the song was called Tears Don't Lie

by a German happy hardcore producer called Mark O. Did hearing it compare to the memory of thinking that this was the greatest song ever made? No, is it the greatest song I've ever heard or the greatest song ever made? Absolutely not. But to me, as a little child, whatever could have happened on that day, it might have been beautiful weather, I might have just had a good day, but in those 30 seconds,

at that stoplight, this was the greatest song that I'd ever heard, and then it was gone. And the memory just reinforced itself as this, it became heaven, it became a fantasy land, it became religious, and I say that, I've made this comparison before, but there's this very unique cultural phenomenon called cargo cults. You don't see this as much anymore, but there were islands in Micronesia, around near Polynesia, tiny, remote, uncontacted islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

that had people living there in tribes who had no contact with the modern world until World War II and suddenly American soldiers start landing on their islands in their plains and they meet the tribes people

and they give them gifts they give them chocolate, they give them sugar they give them cigarettes Coca-Cola now they can't communicate because it's an uncontacted tribe and yanks but they understand exchange and gift

giving but it's so shocking and so strange and so new that the people on the island they just naturally assume that these weird looking men that came down on flying machines

they just assume these must be gods they have to be gods like they're drinking a can of coke they don't have they don't have fizzy things they don't have a lot of sugar they may not even have metal

and now they're drinking a can of coke given to them by a white man who came down in a plane and this happened in a few incredibly isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. World War II ends and then the Americans leave, the soldiers leave, and then the people in the island. Years pass and they start to tell stories about when the gods arrived, when the gods arrived and brought us Coca-Cola and brought us chocolate, when the gods came down on flying machines and then slowly but surely the people in the tribe start to develop religious practices

around the memory of the time the gods came to the island and brought things so they start to design runways made out of bamboo and they start to do religious rituals that look like US soldiers doing military drills and they're making religious rituals about a everything they remember from the behaviour of the US soldiers. And the reason they're doing this is they hope that maybe one day they'll come back and bring more stuff. Because what happens as the 20th century progresses and globalization progresses, every so often, a ship might crash in the Pacific and cargo will wash up on shore.

A crate of Coca-Cola might wash up. So then the people in the island, the tribes people, they start to think, well our prayers are working now this religion that we have is working because this shit is washing up on shore and that becomes known as a cargo cult and it's a very fascinating thing

and sometimes it's used to laugh at those people or to belittle those people or to portray them as primitive to confuse US soldiers with gods no it's just the human mind when it's exposed to scarcity there's no difference between

that and me here and that song when I'm a kid and then going into HMV and humming it. I'm in a cargo cult. At that moment, something wonderful happened, it's gone forever and I need to hold onto its memory and hope that I can bring it back somehow through the ritual of humming. But now as a middle-aged man, if I smoke a little bit of baldy, a couple of cans,

I will throw on, tears don't lie by Marco, and try and relive that little moment. but that there is cultural scarcity and now what's becoming scarce are those opportunities like even when I travel abroad like I've been touring touring as a professional entertainer

since maybe 2009 and you used to be able to rely upon if I go to Canada if I go to Toronto or if I go to America or if I go to Australia 15 years ago, these places felt quite different to Ireland.

And I mean the way that buildings are designed, the clothes that people are wearing, the music that people are listening to, the food that people are eating. Each time you go to a different country or a different city, you get a little bit of culture shock. Everything's different. And the novelty of that experience, it's wonderful because it forces you into the present moment.

when everything looks different and tastes different you have to experience it in the present moment because everything's exciting and then you just hold onto it as a memory of your holiday but I'm going back to these countries every two, three years for the past 15 years and then I notice over time yet less and less of a shock

because global culture is becoming completely homogenised we're all on Instagram we're all on TikTok whether you're in Australia or Canada or America or Ireland or England, whatever the fuck. It's all the same memes. It's all the same music. And the last time I was walking around

the mall in Toronto. I'm just like, holy fuck. There's the body shop. Oh, there's Zara. And you walk into the Zara and you walk into the body shop and it's like, I might as well be in fucking Limerick

because everything absolutely everything is the exact same back home. And then you look around and all the people are wearing the exact same clothes. And then you look up and the light fixtures are the same. Everything is the same no matter where you go in the world because it's all being made in China. And this is globalisation. This is cultural homogenisation and this is real. But what you lose then is the wonder and novelty of scarcity. So when I do find something that's rare and scarce, I try and real. I try and respect it. I had two things that I was respecting. Number one, there's a type of sparkling water

that I can only get in Spain called Vici Catalan, which tastes a little bit like bread soda. I think I've done an entire podcast on it about six years ago. I can only get this sparkling water in Spain. I know I can go online. I can go online and I can order it and I can have it sent to my house in Ireland very easily. No problem at all. I write. refuse to do it. I need that sparkling water to stay in Spain. I need to worship it. I need to treat it like a religious item, something that I can't have. I can't touch. It needs to stay as a memory, as a taste that I can recall. And then all the lovely, wonderful memories of being in Spain come back when I do that. Because this isn't about sparkling water. It's about wonder and memory

and value. There's an Oscar Wilde quote which is through a slit too wide there comes no wonder and I think what he was referring to there was like being able to see

into a beautiful garden but you can only see you can only peek in with your eye so you can't see the whole garden just a little bit and you have to wonder about what the rest of that garden must be like

behind the high walls same with my Spanish sparkling water through a slit too wide there comes no wonder I need to leave it in Spain and recall it and memorize it and look forward to it and know if I ordered this to Ireland and I can drink this sparkling water whenever I want it loses value it loses wonder so I don't fuck with that that's a religious item to me there was one other

thing that I was treating in a similar way that I was trying to keep scarce and I just couldn't resist it. Shit Spanish coffee. Do you ever go to a coffee shop in Newarka? One of the little Spanish cafes and you say, can I

have an Americano? Or can I just have a coffee? Or cafe can lece, as they call it. And you sit down and you can see, oh, they're using a coffee machine. Okay, this is proper bean to cup coffee. It's real fucking coffee. And then they down to you and they give you the worst cup of coffee you've ever tasted in your life.

And every single Spanish cafe serves the exact same cup of shit. And you're drinking it going, is this instant? What the fuck is this? This isn't like any other coffee I've tasted anywhere. I can clearly see they're using espresso machines. This is real coffee. Why is it so terrible? But you're in Spain.

You're on holiday. You're relaxed. you're with friends everything is beautiful and wonderful you tolerate the shit coffee you don't care that the coffee is shit because you're in fucking Spain and everything is different and magnificent

and then before you know it you leave Spain and now you're thinking about shit Spanish coffee you're thinking about terrible coffee because of the memories that it brings back and you don't know what it's called and you don't know why the Spanish coffee is shit and you don't know why every single Spanish cafe sells the same cup of shit

but you just know it exists. And we've got access to fantastic coffee in Ireland. You go to any little country village in Ireland and there'll be a coffee shop with a trained barista giving you decent bean to cup coffee. And many a time I've been drinking, read high-quality coffee and I've thought to myself, just give me some Spanish shit.

I want a Spaniard to shit into my mouth. That's what I want today. Oh, if only I could have that shit Spanish. coffee and all the memories would flow back. And I'd reflect on that and I'd really cherish it. I'd cherish that and I'd say to myself, isn't that great? That's the closest thing that I have now to when I was a child and a song would come on an advert on TV and I'd never hear it again and I just had to record it in my memory and pine for it and want it and desire it and I can't have it. I can have anything I want but I can't have this.

And I used to love that about the Spanish coffee. Until about six months ago, I found out shit Spanish coffee has a name and it's called Tarifacto. So from what I read online, during the Spanish Civil War, which would have been late 1930s, I think, during the Spanish Civil War, there was a shortage of coffee because there was a huge civil war going on. There was a shortage of coffee. So the Spanish people were like Alright there's a coffee shortage But everyone still wants to drink coffee What are we going to do?

So what they would do is they'd start to roast Their coffee beans in sugar And then they'd grind it So you'd end up with It would bulk out the coffee With about 20, 30% sugar But the sugar would burn to fuck burnt sugar

And it would also burn the coffee beans And it also meant you could store the coffee for long And this became known as the tarifacto process. It was a way to make the most of having less during the Spanish Civil War. So now you have this incredibly bitter, burnt coffee that's also mostly burnt sugar, tarifacto coffee. And it's been served in Spanish cafes. And then the Spanish Civil War inns, and the rationing is over. But now people have a taste for this terrible disgusting coffee.

And this becomes the standard coffee that served in Spanish cafes. Tare facto, tarifacto. And when I found that out, I was like, well, fuck it, I got to order some bastard in tarifacto now, don't I? So I did. I managed to find some online. Got sent some ground tarifacto in the post. Made myself a cup of it.

And instantly, like, fuck it, I'm back in Cordoba. My God. I could close my eyes. and I'm back in Spain and then that's immediately followed by I wish I didn't do that I wish I didn't do that now it's not scarce anymore

I can have a cup of it whenever the fuck I want and then I went just to show you how small the world has gotten because of the internet how insanely small the world has gotten so after I purchased this tarifacto and had it sent to me in Limerick the brand was called Tirma

I posted a photograph of the bag of coffee on my Instagram stories and said look at this Spanish shit I love drinking this shit Spanish coffee and within 10 minutes

a family member of the company of this particular brand of Spanish coffee is messaging me on Instagram because they're a regular listener to this podcast so that was a very long description of why I'm up late this week drinking coffee

but I really do love my ternifactal even though it's considered a bitter, acrid, poor quality what makes it beautiful is that when you take a sip you're chasing the ghost of sugar. You see it's not sweet and I don't put sugar in my coffee but because the beans are roasted and caramelized in burnt sugar there's that faint taste and not

if you've ever tried to make your own caramel if you've ever put sugar in a frying pan and try to dissolve it to make caramel you get to that stage where it's golden and it's turning and it's turning and you need a lot of skill to nail it then you go too far and it burns and a little piece of smoke curls up to your nose

nostrils, pinches it, where that warm and golden caramel smell disappears, and now you're left with a little violent zing, something bitter, something astringent, something pinty, the tarifacto has a shadow of that. And the other thing that I adore about tarifacto coffee is once you find out that oh it's burnt sugar once you find that out it completely reframes the taste

of the coffee something unlocks something clicks and you're like oh that's what that is and also it'll make shittier coffee machine if you have an espresso maker

that uses pressure the tarifactor will fuck it up you're actually not supposed to put it into an espresso machine. You're supposed to do it in like a maca pat. But I put it in my espresso machine and it fucks it up. I have to clean it every week. But I'm up late. I'm doing the night shift tonight. Which I like. I tried to get the podcast recorded in the daytime but sometimes I like to record in the stillness of night.

I stuck my head outside there. And it's November dark and cold And the fucking sky is very clear The moon looks like a jaundiced light bulb The stars are all proud and obvious And then, which is becoming an ever-increasing fucking sight When you look about a clear night sky You see the little dots

You'll see a little trail of what you think is stars But there's a row of them like five or six and it's a Starlink satellite. Five or six little dots like a train in the sky, moving pure fast. Elon Musk put it up there. You can't escape the fucker. But outside right now, there's this creeping fog.

It's fucking gorgeous. I wish I could show you. It's half two in the morning. And there's a spooky hovering graveyard, smoky fog out there. only about six foot off the ground and you can breathe it in, you can drink it. And that's the, that's the spooky Irish other world mist. That's the mist that in mythology, people believe that that was the carton, that was the veil between this reality and the parallel reality of the other world.

And it is, I don't think it's spooky or creepy, but I can see why people think it is. It's ghostly. You'd hallucinate it. a figure in it, if you got anxious enough. There's many a gig I'd be coming home from. Like again, my job, like I said, it's touring, and I've been doing it for a long time.

So sometimes I'd finish a gig, get out of the place at maybe half-12, one in the morning, then we're driving back to Limerick, and when you do it this time of year, driving along the motorway, and then suddenly out of nowhere. The fog is there in front you, tangible, floating just above the ground, and then you're stuck in the middle of it,

like being in a cloud when you're in an airplane. And then if you're not careful, you lose sense of up or down or left or right, and you can see why it's associated with the fairies or the other world in Irish mythology. I mean, the fairies in Irish mythology and in Irish folklore, fairies aren't little cute things with wings. they're strange malevolent demons like even if you type fog or mist into Dukas

which is the Irish National Folklore Collection you get loads of stories like there's one story I found here from the 1930s in Waterford that says there's a field in this locality known as Knock Parson where the fairies are set to dwell and on several occasions people went there after nightfall to gather mushrooms

and when they entered the field a great thick mist seemed to fall everywhere and when they tried to get out of the field they found it surrounded by a great stone wall and the persons inside in the field had to remain there until morning as soon as daybreak came the mist suddenly cleared and the people could get away

so what you have there is a folklore story about the terror of this mist go into this field and then the mist surrounds you and now you're lost during the other world but what I enjoy about that story is how you can explain it using science so this type of thick fog

it usually only happens on nights like tonight when you have a really clear sky when the sky is so clear and the stars are bright and the moon is bright and it's cold but in that story there it mentions there's a hill and when people go out there at nightfall

to pick mushrooms that's when the fog comes on them. Now I'm guessing that those people, they would have believed if they're picking mushrooms, that they're stealing them. They're stealing them from the fairies and the punishment is the mist. Like the mist comes about to protect the mushrooms. Thing is, when the night is, I could pick mushrooms out there now. The moon is so clear that I could see mushrooms on the grass by just the moon.

So the people probably went out, and this is the 30s, so no one has a torch, the people probably went out to collect the mushrooms on a nightlight tonight when you've got moonlight. But when it's cold and when there's no clouds up there, there's no wind. It's unbelievably still out there with the clearest sky you can imagine. What happens under those conditions is a thing called radiative cooling. no cloud insulation, so the heat that's stored in the ground from the daytime, from the sun, that escapes rapidly, radiative cooling. It goes right up into the air, up into space. But when that rapidly cooling air comes off the ground and goes up, it meets the humidity in the air,

and then that's when the fog farms suddenly, like a thick blanket out of nowhere that creeps. It's literally, it's a cloud at ground level. And it can be, it can be freaky when it just suddenly happens. It's what I just saw when I went outside. It's all around me. But that's what's been described in that old folklore story. The same conditions that make it great for picking mushrooms under moonlight are the same conditions that create this sudden fog. But the people back then thought, oh no, it's the fairies. Whatever we're doing here, taking these mushrooms, this is some type of sacred ground and the fog is coming up to protect this area and if we're not careful we'll get lost in here or might even go to another dimension and that same nighttime

radiative cooling that was actually harnessed thousands of years ago in paria in what is now iran to create the world's first desert the world's first the world's first frozen desert which you'd expect to come from a cold country, it didn't. The first civilization to have frozen deserts were the Persians. The ancient Persians, and I'm talking, maybe 2,000 years ago, maybe a bit longer, they had these structures in the desert called Yakjai's, tall, sandy columns like round pyramids, and the desert would get hot. daytime, all that heat gets stored in the ground. Then the night time it's a clear sky,

it's cold. You get this evaporative cooling. But these Persian towers in the desert, they could harness that evaporative cooling and they could create ice. They could create ice in the desert using nothing but air and cooling. And then they'd get this ice and they used to make a dessert called Faluda. You can still get it today. If you go to a decent Persian, restaurant. They might have Faluda on the menu. There's a place in Parnell Street in Dublin that does it. And it's this

really weird. It's like icy spaghetti with rose water and that's the world's first frozen dessert. So while the Irish were going fuck that, this is a mist that's going to transport you to another dimension.

The Parisians were going, I think we can make desserts out of it instead. Okay, let's have a little Lockerina pause now. I have some dull keys. I have some keys here that have a very dull jingle. I enjoy jingling them

because I don't know, keys are usually quite abrasive, the type of things that I'd disturb a dog. These keys would never disturb a dog. So let's jingle them and hear an advert for some bullshit. Listen to that.

Dull keys Very dull keys Gorgeous We don't hear enough of dull keys Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page Patreon.com forward slash The Blindby podcast

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Okay, I'm contractually obligated to promote some gigs. I'm not doing any gigs in this 2025. My next gig start in January 26. So these are wonderful Christmas presents if you're thinking of getting a Christmas present for someone. January, I'm in Waterford in the Theatre Royal. I'm also in Kildare at the spirit of Kildare Festival. Yum, Yum.

Then, February, Vicker Street, Belfast Waterfront Theatre, Leisure Landing Galway. The Aineck down in Killarney, that's February. March. The visual arts centre in Carlo. Yum, yum, give me some Carlo. I haven't been there in a while. What else is happening in March?

Cork Opera House, go on Cork. Then Limerick, my own home city of Limerick. there in fucking, when is that March as well, is it? University Concert Hall Limerick, April, that's in April, 2026. Google any of those dates and also you can go to my website, theblindbuypodcast.i, where you'll see a bunch of dates on it, assuming my website works. Then next October there, 26, my England, Scotland and Wales tour.

I'm in the Brighton Dome. I'm in the new theatre in Cardiff, I'm in the Warwick Art Centre Coventry, I'm in Beacon Hall in Bristol, I'm in G-Live in Guildford, I'm in the Barbican, the beautiful Barbican in London, I'm in the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow, and I'm at stage one in Gateshead, wonderful Gateshead, then finishing it all off in the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. Alright, that's October 26 It's a long time away But some of those gigs are setting out fucking fast Fane.com. UK forward slash the Blindbuy Podcast is where you'll get those 10 tickets

I'm up late because I'm quite distracted I have to go to an award ceremony next week in London I'm a bit nervous about it A documentary I made last year Blind by the Land of Slaves and Scholars Which is

It's about early Irish Christianity But it's really about writing It's about the history of writing in Ireland So quite unexpectedly Very very unexpectedly That's been nominated for A Grierson Trust Award

Which is It's one of the most prestigious documentary awards in the world and I'm up for best presenter and I did not, I don't, nobody fucking expected this and as far as I know, I think it's the only, the only Irish documentary, it's the only RTE documentary for sure that's nominated at this award ceremony. I've never gone to an award ceremony in my life. I've been nominated for quite a few awards. First one was 2011. And I've been nominated for a few awards since then. I've never gone to any of the ceremonies.

I've always avoided them. This one, I kind of have to go. It's too, it's too big. I'd piss people off if I didn't go. It's not only a big award ceremony. Best presenter is, it's like best album or best actor. It's the big award within the big award ceremony. and I'm up against

fucking Louis Thoreau. It's a huge honour and I can't believe it. But I can't sit this one out. This is one of those ones where if you don't show up to this one you better have a good reason. You better be sick or too old or something

but you kind of have to go to this. And the reason I've always avoided award ceremonies is just the practicality of it. I wear a plastic bag on my head. Award ceremonies are maybe five, six hours long. I don't want to be sitting around with a bag in my head for five or six hours.

It's not practical. Can't drink pints. Can't eat dinner. Definitely can't eat dinner with a bag on my head. I could drink soup through a straw but I don't want to do that. So I have to go to this. The award ceremony is next Tuesday. RTE actually, if you want to see that documentary, if you're in Ireland,

RTE will be replaying the documentary on Monday night at like half ten, I think, on RTE won because it's been nominated for this award. But I'm going to have to go to this fucking award ceremony I'm going to have to figure out two costumes basically I'm going to have to wear my plastic bag

and be blind by for any bits that there's a camera or if I'm lucky enough to win an award and have to go up on stage but even if I don't win the award I'll have to do the red carpet shit, so obviously I have to do that with a plastic bag in my head, but then I have to figure out. How do I change costumes and just go back to being nobody and mingle amongst the

crowd? It's the only way I can do it. I'm not mingling amongst the crowd with a bag in my head for several hours. Because of the amount of talking I'd have to do. Because even if people didn't know who the fuck I was, everyone's going to want to talk to the one person who's wearing a plastic bag on their head if you get me. That's not the bit that's making me nervous. Honest the fuck. I'm in no way nervous about the awards.

If I'm lucky enough to win it and I have to make a speech, I don't give a fuck about that. I wouldn't even prepare a speech and I'd comfortably get up and give a speech off the top of my fucking head. No bother to me. Don't give a shit about that. What I'm nervous about is I have to dress smart casual

and I don't know what that fucking means well I kind of do I've googled it I'm looking at a lot of photographs of Graham Norton Graham Norton is the master of smart casual I'd prefer it if it was just smart and I get away with a tuxedo

so you just wear it I can't this has to be a blazer shirt some type of trousers and shoes and then making that work with a plastic bag. Now what would I... It's also not one of these peacocking.

It's not one of these award ceremonies where you make a big statement or dress ridiculously, even though I am aware I'm wearing a plastic bag on my head but that doesn't count. In my heart and soul, what would I like to wear at this award ceremony? If I was to follow my heart.

So, something I noticed recently. I've been doing a lot of mindful walking around Limerick. I enjoy mindful walking. walks where I empty my head and just focus on walking and breathing and my body and sensations.

Nises, sounds, textures. I love doing that. And there was a familiar figure who I used to see on my walks and I just noticed last week I didn't see this person anymore. I may have mentioned this person in previous podcast long ago.

There used to be this fella I'd see around a certain area of Limerick City and he used to walk around the place with his dog but the dog's leash was attached to the belt of his trousers he was a man I'd say in his 60s and he used to wear really skinny jeans

which made him look a bit like a pigeon and he had suppose Muffin Top love handles But the interesting thing about this man is The dog, the dog's leash was attached to his belt And I used to walk behind him Just to watch how insane this was

The dog used to pull his pants down And the man's It would start with his torso being on display His muffin top his love handles would be out and they'd get a wonderful rosy red colour from the wind and then the dog would tug more

and his pants would basically come down to the point that sometimes he's just his full arse his full arse would be out and this man would just walk around Limerick with his arse out and I used to follow him from a distance because I'd just marvel at how nuts it was

And then I came to realize Because I'd be thinking Man, your arse is out Your bum Your bum is out in public The dog Your dog is attached to your belt Why aren't you putting your pants up

Do you not notice what's going on And then it became apparent to me This is deliberate This is his thing This is this man's thing What made me realise it was deliberate it is one day. I watched him and so he had a kind of a flamboyant walk. In one hand, he was holding like a flask, like a flask of tea. And in the other hand, he had a very large set of keys.

And then I realized, oh, this is about accountability. That's what this is about. So even if he wanted to pull his pants up, he couldn't, because it's like, well, I've got a flask in this hand and I've got keys in the other and the dog is attached to my pants what you want me to do. Ah, now I see what this is. This is a fetish, you mad cunt. He wants people to see his arse. But he's figured out a way whereby he's not accountable. He's not accountable. He's not flashing himself because it's the dog who's putting his pants down. He's not putting his own pants down. It's the dog who's pulling his pants down and showing his arse. And I used to respectfully follow that man when I'd see him and just look at his arse and go, that's one of

the maddest things I've ever seen him. What a lunatic. What a fucking lunatic. And he'd do it every time I'd see him. And I just, just recently I noticed, I'm like, just I hadn't seen him in a while. haven't seen that man in a while. And I wondered, has he been arrested? Has someone just said to him, put your fucking arse away, Brendan, or whatever his name is.

He looked like a Brendan. Put your arse away, Brendan. There's children around the place. And then he would say, it's my dog. My dog is pulling my pants down. He's attached to my belt. It's not me.

And then the person said, Stop it. We know what you're doing. We know what you're doing. Put your arse away or get a better belt. Or how about this? Just hold the fucking leash with your hand like a normal person. Because clearly, if your arse is out all the time, this isn't working and it's not working for the community either. So I was thinking maybe that happened. Maybe he was confronted. Maybe he had to stop. And I went rooting around. He died. Turned out that he died of natural. causes a couple of months back. And I kind of... I never spoke to him. I didn't know his name. I wanted to write a story about him. I wanted to... I mean, that's the beautiful beginnings of a short story, or even a novel. To write a story...

What's going on in that person's head? What if he went walking with the dog, dragging his pants around his ankles? And then found himself in a fairy mound surrounded by mist. and then was judged before a fairy court. But if I was to follow my heart and go, what would I wear to the award ceremony? I'd do that. I'd do that.

I would arrive at the award ceremony with my bag on and a dog attached to my belt consistently pulling my pants down so that my arse is out. And then if I was doing interviews and anybody was asking me why my arse is out or why my muffin top is out, I'd say it's not me, it's the dog. but she can't do that.

So instead, I've just been off googling photographs of Graham Norton trying to figure out his style, trying to figure out what type of shirt would Graham Norton wear, what type of blazer would Graham Norton wear. And I'm going to have to get myself some type of single-breasted blazer, I'd imagine. But then, of course,

like I'm shaded dressing myself. I wonder what Louis Thoreau wears the fucking award ceremonies, let's. Oh, he wears tuxedos. No, he wears soots. Louis Thoreau wears soots at awards ceremonies with a tie. I wonder is he going to go smart, casual. I'm just realising there's a strong chance

I'm going to end up speaking to Louis Thoreau at this documentary awards because if we're in the same category together, there's a strong chance that, we'd have a conversation and I'm going to have to avoid talking to him about so I have a theory

of a very strange theory that there's a Tom Waits song from 1982 that's actually written about Louis Theroux's childhood and it's one of my it's one of my hottest takes so Tom Waits has

this song called Shoreleave absolutely magnificent and song. I don't know with this podcast sound the way it does without Tom Waits' song

Sure Leave. When I first started making this podcast and trying to decide what would the feeling be, what would the tone of this podcast be, the piano in the background, the pacing of how I speak, the imagery that I use,

the literature of the podcast. A touchstone that I would use was the Tom Waits song, Shorleaf, which is, it's one of my favourite songs of all time. It's not particularly nice to listen to. It's not melodic. It's a speaking song. It's closer to a short story. And that's what I love about Tom Waits. Tom Waits, a lot like Randy Newman. A lot of his songs are short stories. But anyway, Tom Waits wrote this song. shore leave in 1982 and it's a short story about an American sailor who's on shore leave in Hong Kong and it's just about his about his night walking around Hong Kong as an off-duty sailor and looking up at the moon and

marvelling about how the moon in the sky is the same moon that is white is looking at back in America. The lyrics are very cinematic and descriptive. With buckshot eyes and a purple heart I rolled down the National Stroll and with a big fat paycheque strapped to my hip sack and a shore-leaf wristwatch underneath my sleeve in a Hong Kong drizzle on Cuban heels. I rode down the gutter to the blood bank and I'd left all my papers on the taiconderoga, and I was in bad need of a shave. So I slopped at the corner and called Chaumain and shot billiards with a midget until the rain stopped. And I bought a long sleeve shirt with horses on the front and some gum and a lighter and a knife, and a new deck

of cards with girls on the back, and I sat down and wrote a letter to my wife. And Tom waits. He speaks, he speaks those lyrics, like the way I spoke them there. Now here's the thing. The the lyrics are so visually rich. They're so visually descriptive that I have a feeling that when Tom Waits was writing it, he was using some type of visual cue. He had a very clear picture in his head and it's very common for writers to use movies or to use postcards, magazines, literal visual images to then translate this into words and bring it into your own fiction.

That's a very common thing to do. So Tom Waits wrote shortly in 1982 and a lot of the visual imagery in that song is very, very similar to a movie that came out two years earlier in 1979 called St. Jack.

St. Jack, it stars Ben Gazzara, great actor. and it's it's a film about an American he's a pimp he's living in Singapore he's a pimp and a lot of the clients are sailors on shore leave

so in this film from 1979 a huge amount of the visual imagery including the shirts that he's wearing a lot of the descriptions from shore leave the Tom Waits song You can see them in this film from 1979 as St. Jack. So my theory is Tom Waits saw this film in the cinema a year or two before he wrote the song

and some of the visual imagery from that film are actually in the lyrics of Shirley. You can actually place the song over parts of St. Jack the movie and it nearly, it almost works as a narration. I've tried it. But here's the thing. Who wrote the screenplay for St. Jack? Paul Thoreau, Louis Thoreau's dad, who was living in Singapore at the time. Who was born in Singapore? Louis Thoreau. Louis Thoreau was actually born in Singapore,

while his dad was living in Singapore, while his dad was writing the screenplay for St. Jack, based on things that he's seeing all around him in Singapore. So that's why I have a plausible theory that the Tom Wait's song, surely, from 1982, may possibly be inadvertently about Louis Theroux's childhood. And I'm going to have to stop myself saying that to Louis Theroux if I meet him at that award ceremony.

If he's a Tom Waits fan, I'm definitely saying it to him. If he's not, I'm not saying it to him. I'll have to really stop. So I've been bothered this week about figuring out how I'm going to dress myself for this award ceremony next fucking Tuesday. and getting annoyed. Because I want to just wear my Gortex. I want to dress for the weather.

But I'm going to have to figure out what is smart casual? Will it look okay? How am I going to fucking put it off and feel comfortable in it? Fashion is a very social language. It's a social language and I struggle with the social communicative element of it.

When I wear Gortex, When I dress for the weather, you know, I'm dressing to protect myself from the elements, from the cold, from the wind, from the rain. I love that. But when I dress smart, casual, I'm dressing to protect myself from other people's opinions. And that's quite, that's ambiguous. And there's a lot of room for error. You can get things wrong.

When it comes to the rain, Gartex. breathable, keeps the fucking, keeps the weather out. Blazers. You know, if I, if I, if I were, I just learned today, if I turn up in a, in a double-breasted blazer, I have it wrong. That's not smart, casual. That's, that's, that's smart, that's formal. So you can't wear a double breast. So now I have to get a single-breasted blazer. And then I'm going to, what the fuck does this matter? Who started this? Who started this? Who decided this? Who decided on suit? What a strange thing. When did that start?

And then instead of looking at photographs at Graham Norton or scanning through the River Island website looking for blazers. The history of how it came about is actually quite fucking interesting. So the French Revolution, right?

So men menswear. In the 1700s, fashion was defined mostly by France, by aristocratic France. And if you look at how rich men dressed in the 1700s, men used a peacock, big wigs, big huge puffed wigs, powdered wigs, frocks, froux, frilly stuff, high heels. Men, men's clothing was what you'd call costume now. Men's, if you were to dress, like men dressed in, like men dressed in the 1700s, it would be classed as highly effeminate. How did that stop?

What happened? And what happened was the French Revolution. The opulence and the displays of wealth, the French royalty were getting their heads chopped off There was a revolution The peasants revolted And aristocratic wealthy people were literally being executed And people who were royal

And people who were wealthy Once the revolution started Some of them they went into fucking hiding So obviously You're not going to be dressing In high heels and wigs In an opulent fashion because you'd get your head chopped off

and this was France but the French Revolution the 1790s that frightened all of Europe all the wealthy people all the monarchies of Europe were like fuck what if that happens here

and in Britain and Ireland would have been part of Britain at the time through colonisation like the English monarchy were terrified of what if a fucking French Revolution happens here? And you had a bit of it in Ireland.

Wolftonne, Theobald Wolfton and the United Irishman. That was a movement, a rebellion, an attempted revolution which was inspired by the French revolution. It was a Republican revolution. The French

even tried to assist Wolfton and the United Irishman. So the English monarchy by the late 1700s are like terrified. They're like fucking wolf tone over there. That could be us.

What if us, the English monarchy, what if the people here gain class consciousness and put us in the guillotine? So what happens is is fashion start to change. Powdered wigs, high heels, frocks, peacocking. If you're

a wealthy person, in England, if you're royalty, or if you're a duke or whatever shit they have over there, whatever royal titles they give. If you're one of these people, now you don't want to dress like a French aristocrat anymore. That's dangerous now. So a more austere way of dressing starts to come into style at the very end of the 1700s. It happens all across Europe and it's known as the Great Male Renunciation, where bright ornate colours and clothes are abandoned for something a bit more sober.

And the concept of the visual masculinity, how we think a man should dress and a man should look, that starts to begin now with this great male renunciation, and it's actually its roots are in an anxiety from the ultra wealthy about what if there's a revolution, We've got to stop showing off. And in the early 1800s, there's this fella in England called Bo Brummel. And Bo Brummel, he was best friends with the Prince George.

Right, this was during the Georgian period. He was best friends with Prince George. This Bo Brummel fella, anyway, he's a dandy. I think he was the first dandy. Very, very stylish individual. all because the prince was best friends with him the prince started the dress like him too and that then defined the style of how men should dress in England but beau brummel he was the first one to start wearing like double-breasted suits um tailored trousers more simple cravats and shirts

so the suit as we know it today and the blazer that I'm going to have to purchase you can trace it back to this fella bow brummel but really what you can trace it to is the anxiety of the monarchy about getting their heads chopped off now that for me that makes it easier now for me

to figure out how to dress in a smart casual way it makes suits and blazers seem a little less confusing because now I know the story of it and that story is really fucking interesting so I'm going to go and pick myself out a single-breasted blazer when I go to London next week

and I'd like to say that the thing that I'm looking forward to the most is going to the award ceremony in London it's not what I'm going to make time to do while I'm in London I want to visit the last surviving sewer lamp

in London this is fascinating right so down close enough to the Thames I don't know where it is I'll figure it out once I get there there's a fancy hotel

called the Savoy Hotel and at the back of the Savoy Hotel is a road called Carting Lane and on this road there's an old like Victorian looking street lamp it's an old lamp

and it's got a flame in it but what makes this fucking fascinating is it's actually powered by like farts gas, it's a sewer gas lamp and it's the last one in London

and it still operates so the old sores of not just London all over the cities of Britain the old sewers the sores used to be underneath the city as they still are

but they weren't modern like they are now so you have all this shit and piss underneath the streets and that would generate huge amounts of gas, methane gas, which could literally cause explosions really dangerous. So throughout London, you had these special gas lamps where methane farts from the sewer would travel up this lamp and then be lit at the top. So you had street lights that were powered by sewer gas. And the last

one that's left in London, that still you can go to it and if you stand beside it at night time and it lights you it illuminates you you're being lit by farts literally so that's beside the savoy hotel and i'm going to make time to go and see that a hundred percent and i'm just fascinated by these english fart lamps in particular i call them english fairy trees and that that might sound strange but i tell you why in sheffield in particular The thing is about Irish fairy trees. Fairy trees, any tree in the countryside in Ireland that looks out of place,

it's by itself in the middle of a field or on a hill. Okay? And it's usually white thorn. But any time in Ireland in the countryside, there's a tree by itself on a hill and that's unusual. We always call those fairy trees. They're fairy trees. trees and you don't fuck with them because you just go, that's strange. That's up on a hill.

It looks like it's been put there deliberately. It must have been the fairies. In Sheffield in particular, these fart gas lamps are often situated. By themselves on hills, they look out of place. It's a lamp on the top of a hill. And you're looking at it going. Now there's very few left in Sheffield. There's about six, but there used to be lots of them and they'd just be on a hill by themselves illuminating nothing and that's why I call them the English fairy trees

because they're just strange and out of place but the reason they're on hills is so because Sheffield is a hilly place with the old sores the gas sewer gas from decomposing

shit and piss that would accumulate under hills so in like the 1800s hundreds, a hill in Sheffield City was at risk of exploding if it didn't have a lamp on it that could let the gas out to go on fire. So that's why I call them English fairy trees. And Sheffield in particular fascinates me because when I was there on tour, I went to visit the cathedral, Sheffield Cathedral, which is in the middle of the city. Now Sheffield is very industrial. And the cathedral there is about a thousand years old. But where the cathedral was,

there was an Anglo-Saxon cross and on this cross which is in the British Museum now there was designs on it that were like vines and leaves and they reckon that Sheffield Cathedral was once a pagan sacred grove

that it was like a holy forest a sacred forest that was worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons so I'm going to go to my awards you know I don't like awards I'm very grateful to be nominated that's magnificent and awards are brilliant

because they bring more work that's the wonderful thing about awards but also awards reviews these are all quite external ways to evaluate art and if you want to create art and you want to create anything that has a sense of meaning

you can't be thinking about awards or reviews or even other people's opinions you have to be in a state of play and enjoyment where the success of the work is defined by the amount of meaning that it brings you when you do it and that's what I try to do but the flip side of that is if you approach the work in that way

you're not thinking about making anything good or bad but you're doing it to enjoy it that tends to create the type of work that's good enough to get recognised for awards. So it is a double-edged blade. If I was thinking about awards, I wouldn't have been able to make this documentary

the way I made it, simple as that. I'd be thinking, oh, what wins awards? Let's make something, let's make a documentary like other documentaries that win awards. And then you do that, and you no longer have something with a unique voice you're copying. So that's the double-edged blade.

I'm better off staying the fuck away from awards. and the other guiding principle I have and this takes it back to that cultural scarcity anytime I make anything for TV, anything I'm always thinking about the last little space of cultural scarcity that we have is often the hotel room when you go to a hotel

it's often the only time that you'll turn on television use a remote control and just look at whatever's on TV because hotel rooms are so boring and I always try to make something that I imagine a French tourist or a German tourist in a hotel in Ireland and they just flick on the TV

and then they stumble across my documentary with no context and they go what the fuck is this odd stuff what is this weird shit and that's what that's what this documentary is, which you can watch it again on RT1 this Monday. It's a documentary about

early Irish Christianity. It's a dead serious documentary with loads of academics in it. It's not comedy, but it just happens to be presented by a man with a plastic bag in his head. And at all times I have a dog with me and the dog has eyebrows.

And none of that is ever explained. Ever. And that's how I wanted it. And it got terrible reviews, which is a good thing. Which is a good thing. Even though it can be painful. In the long run, it's good to be getting terrible reviews.

If the thing you're making is weird, you want the reviewers to get it wrong, to not understand it, to be confused by it and to be upset by it. That's a good thing. That's all I have time for this week. This was an incredibly strange episode. I don't even know what this was about,

but I'm quite happy with whatever the fuck that was. I'm coming away with a feeling of happiness about that. past hour here. I actually wanted to speak about meditation and mental health this week. I've been getting into a solid meditation practice the past two weeks, like daily, really sticking with it. And I'm noticing some powerful results already. I'm experiencing glimmers they're called, which are just little moments in my day where I'm overwhelmed with the simple joy of existing, wonderful feeling

and glimmers are what happen after sustained meditation if you meditate every day for a couple of weeks you'll start to receive these little lovely glimmers and what it is is it's your nervous system calming down it's safety, it's the feeling of safety and I wanted to speak about that this week

but also I always try to be congruent I'll never force something on this podcast even though I intended to speak about mental health and meditation instead what came to me was

whatever the fuck that was and I don't want to interfere with that process all right dog bless rub a dog genuflect to a swan wink at a wood I'll catch you next week. You know,

and You know, and You know, I don't know. I mean, and you know,

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