The Blindboy Podcast - The colonial history of Fish Fingers

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

An incident with Yorkshire Puddings in the frozen aisle leads me to unravel the colonial history at the heart of Fish Fingers Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yawn at the paw prints you jaundiced onions. Welcome to the Blind Byte Podcast. I hope you had a charming week. Let's begin this week's podcast with a piece of prose that was submitted by Hollywood actor Colin Farrell. This is the second piece of prose that Colin has sent in. It's more of a meditation than a piece of prose but he delivered this to me by folding it up into a paper airplane and aiming it at my iris. So this poem is called When I Use the Car Wash by Colin Farrell. When I use the car wash I don't wear any trousers or underpants. I roll down the sunroof. I place both my legs up on the two front seats and my hands are on the dashboard. It's a yoga pose that I learned on YouTube called the downward dog. Don't call me a fucking dog because I'm Colin Farrell. So I'm nude from the waist down with my hands on the

dashboard and my lang are dangling like an air freshener. Except mine doesn't smell like a pine tree, what? Then I stick my arse out of the sunroof, so that the big spinning giant brushes from the car wash tickle my anogenital region. I learned that word from the back of a can of deodorant, the bit that tells you where you shouldn't spray it. Then before the car wash is finished, I get back into the front seat as if

nothing has happened. The inside of my car is usually dripping wet because the sunroof was open but I don't care because I'm Colin Farrell and I can buy a new car. The end. Thank you Colin Farrell for that piece of prose. I hope it's a true story and not just a lampoon or a jest I was wondering actually when I was reading it was Colin Farrell or he mentioned there the anogenital region because the only place that I know that word from as well is like the back of a can of deodorant you know

you'd be reading the back of a can of deodorant and it's like do not spray this on the anogenital region or the bars as we call it in Limerick or stinkers bridges You'd be reading the back of a can of deodorant. It's like, do not spray this on the anogenital region. Or the bars, as we call it in Limerick. Or stinkers bridges. Sometimes known in Cork. But I was thinking as Colin Farrell was submitting that poem to me. I wonder was he looking at that the recent photograph of President Trump's

toilet in Mar-a-Lago where he had all the fucking Trump the fucking silly bastard Donald Trump's toilet in Mar-a-Lago with seven foot tall boxes of piles of classified documents

and when I was looking at that like when I was looking at that like when I was looking at boxes and piles and documents of classified information about CIA black sites and torture programs in Guantanamo Bay I couldn't help but imagine Donald Trump sitting on the toilet reading those things that this is like his toilet reading because before mobile phones like no one had piles of classified documents in their toilet but before mobile phones you had to read the back of a can of deodorant or the back of a can of shampoo

and you became acquainted with words like isobutane or propylene carbonate, geraniol, an anogenital region. And then it would have like the name of the industrial estate in Birmingham where your can of imperial leather deodorant was made and a little phone number. And I used to think, who needs this? Looking at the back of a can of deodorant, going, why is there a phone number there? What piece of information could I possibly need where I need to ring up the industrial estate in Birmingham

where my fucking deodorant is made? And then, of course, I did once, when I was about 12. And then they answered and I got nervous and hung up. But a month later, my dad was really upset because he was looking at the phone bill and someone had someone had rang the UK which was quite expensive back then it was about 30p a minute to ring the UK and then he came to me and said were you ringing the UK why were you ringing

the UK and I couldn't tell him I just rang the number that I saw on the back of a can of deodorant so I lied to him and said I was trying to I was trying to ring the Natural History Museum in London to find out about dinosaur bones then he felt guilty and left me alone so if you're a new listener to this podcast I recommend going back and listening to some earlier episodes to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast so yeah Donald Trump has been arrested under the Espionage Act and is being charged with crimes that could carry up to 20 years in prison. And he can still run for president and he can still be elected for president because what's happening is so mad and unthinkable that no one bothered to create legislation to stop it from happening. So if you were to ask me, do you think Donald Trump could actually get charged,

If you were to ask me, do you think Donald Trump could actually get charged, sentenced to prison, and then also re-elected as president, and then conduct his presidency while being in jail? I'd say, yeah, I can see that happening. In the current television series that is reality, that would make a great second season. reality that would make a great second season and since 2016 no no since 2015 when david cameron had sex with a pig's mouth since then collectively we all seem to be steering reality towards its most entertaining conclusion regardless of the impact on human life or the environment so yeah I can see that happening but I couldn't get over the photograph of Donald Trump's toilet with the files the boxes of files piled up his toilet looked like the toilet you'd have in a nice hotel in Gart like if a if a

solicitor had a wedding a solicitor's wedding in Gart, the hotel that he would choose, that's what Trump's toilet looks like. And just regarding how bizarre reality has become. The two main stories in the news this week. There's a whistleblower in US military intelligence, a high up whistleblower, who is saying that the US has recovered alien spacecraft and the public need to know. So on the one hand, you're going, wow, this dude, this dude who worked high up in the US military is saying that the US has been hiding UFOs since the 1940s. Fuck me, they must be really good at keeping secrets.

They must be really good at keeping secrets they must be really good at hiding classified information because how do you keep that a secret for so long and then the other big news story is the last president has just been arrested because he's been keeping these classified documents in a fucking toilet and there's a photograph of him and it's like which one is it lads you're able to hide the existence of aliens for 80 years, or you keep your classified documents in a toilet. Which one is it? Pick one. So I went to do my weekly shopping this week.

And there's something I buy in the frozen section. And when I buy it, I do it in a very hurried, secretive and shameful fashion. Now I was never aware of this until this week, but there's a product I buy in the frozen food department and when I reach into the freezer and pick it out and put it into my trolley, it feels a bit like when you buy condoms in the supermarket. You can buy condoms in the supermarket now, but everybody who buys condoms in the supermarket, you go up with your trolley, you plan it out. You don't just nonchalantly fucking browse around the condoms in the supermarket. You plan it, you see them, you grab them and you put them in real quickly and you move along.

Like you're not going to hover around the condoms in the supermarket and look at them going oh I wonder what gossamer means and if you are you pretend you're looking at the lemsip or the paracetamol because they keep the lemsip and the paracetamol beside the condoms so you stand in front of the lemsip and paracetamol and look at them and then you turn your eye to the left and see what the selection of condoms is like then you check around you grab it you put it in the trolley and that can be dangerous because sometimes the boxes of condoms in the supermarket they're not just stacked freely as itinerant boxes sometimes the boxes of condoms are actually in a larger, firm, plastic multi-pack.

And if you try and go past quickly with the trolley and pluck one off the shelf, you can actually drag all the condoms down onto the ground and everybody looks. So you have to look at the condoms from a distance and say, okay, they're untethered and you plan your movement and you make it swift so the only item in the supermarket that makes us behave that way are the condoms but this week I realized I behaved that way in the frozen section towards Yorkshire puddings so I went to the supermarket this week and I was in the frozen section and there were no Yorkshire puddings and then I said fuck it there were no Yorkshire puddings last week either or the week before that and I'm asking myself what where are the Yorkshire puddings why are there no Yorkshire puddings I better go and

ask somebody where the Yorkshire puddings are and then I stopped and this anxiety came up in me and I was like I'm not gonna ask someone who works in Dunn's why there's no Yorkshire puddings in the same way that if I was in the supermarket and there wasn't any condoms I'm I'm just not in no way in the supermarket I'm just not going to somebody who works in the supermarket and going how are you getting on there's no condoms do you have any condoms in the supermarket who amongst you is going to do that which one of you honestly is going to go to duns or tesco and say hey buddy i noticed there's no condoms on the shelf do you have any condoms in the supermarket you're just not going to do it chemist different story in the supermarket you're just not gonna do it chemist different story in the chemist I noticed there's no condoms on the shelf do you have any

behind the counter that I don't know about that that feels pretty okay no condoms in the vending machine of the men's toilet yeah I could see myself going to hotel risk no I'm not queuing up at hotel reception with a lot of Italians and Americans around me and going up to the person at the counter and saying, there's no condoms in the vending machine in the men's toilet. Like, I... I was in a supermarket about two months ago

and I was looking for a toenail clippers, one of the big clippers for your toenails and they didn't have them and then I thought to myself fuck it I really want to clip my toenails I'm just going to ask I'm going to ask one of the girls who works here I'm going to go up to her and say excuse me but I can't find any toenail clippers do you know where they are and then she said I'm not too sure where they are either follow me so then this girl is leading me all around the the aisles and we're searching for toenail clippers and then she asks her colleague now there's two people with me and it's it's taken about three minutes at this point and now they're leading me all around the supermarket searching for toenail

clippers and the whole time I'm just thinking I wonder if they're envisioning my feet now. I wonder if they are wondering what my toenails are like. I wonder if they're concerned about me. Like an old donkey whose hooves are too long. And then I just said, look, it's fine, it's fine. And I saw a set of kitchen scissors, large kitchen scissors. And I took them and I said, this is fine, I'll use them. And they'll use them and they're like no no we can find the toenail clippers don't worry no it's grand grand I'll use these kitchen scissors and I shouldn't have done that because

there was no way there was no way for me to have that interaction without them having a vivid mental vision of me sitting in my kitchen with no shoes on attacking my feet with a kitchen scissors there's no way they didn't think that there's like you're thinking it you're thinking it right now and every time I return to that supermarket I see that girl and she sees me and I know she's thinking there's Mr. Tone Hills and that's why we're not going to ask anyone in the supermarket, where are the condoms? I can't find any condoms,

because nobody wants the person in the supermarket to then have to imagine you having sex. It's the reason Donald Duck has nephews and not children. Donald Duck has nephews, because when he has nephews, you don't have to think of Donald Duck having sex. Well, that's all of us in the supermarket when it comes to condoms. People who go to supermarkets don't have sex. People who go to chemists do have sex.

It doesn't make sense, but this is what we seem to have collectively agreed. Also, I'd like to see the statistics of people who purchase condoms in the supermarket and how many of those people used the self-service checkout rather than going to the cashier. The only possible way if you were in a supermarket and there was no condoms and you had to ask the people there where are the condoms if you dressed in head-to-toe military fatigues, military pants and a military jacket then the people might think oh he's these condoms that he's buying are for a survival situation he's going off to the forest for the weekend and he needs a condom so that he can fill it with two liters of water for a survival situation so last

week I'm in the frozen section in the supermarket and there's no Yorkshire puddings and there hasn't been Yorkshire puddings in a while and that anxiety came up I'm like what what's what's with this shame here what's going on here so I hung around I hung around thinking about it long enough that I started to get really cold in the frozen food section and I realized that it was an Irish thing. I really like Yorkshire puddings. If I'm having a roast dinner I like Yorkshire puddings. Now Yorkshire puddings are not popular in Ireland. You can only buy one brand. It's Aunt Bessie's and it's a big blue bag of Yorkshire puddings. And you put them in the oven and they just take five minutes to cook. And I fucking love them.

I think they're fantastic. You have them with roast potatoes, roast beef, roast chicken, gravy. And they're so resilient. They soak up the gravy. But they fight it. There's resistance. They don't want the gravy. They don't just dissolve in it like bread.

A Yorkshire pudding puts up a fight with the gravy. And you can soak it in gravy as much as you like, but it still has a crunch and a chew to it. And there's a faint egginess to Yorkshire puddings. And when you bite down, you expect them to collapse and flake like pastry but they don't there's a chewy fight in them and they're like like when you have your roast dinner gravy roast potatoes roast beef peas all incredibly enjoyable satisfying things that make sense and then it's like oh fuck great a yorkshire pudding i forgot about you you sense. And then it's like, oh, fuck, great, a Yorkshire pudding.

I forgot about you. You're a bit different. It's like when you're at a party with friends and then a dog comes in. You don't want to spend all your time with the dog. You don't want to give too much attention to the dog. But if you're at a party, drink is flowing, you're talking to everybody, you're having a good time, and then it's like oh fuck it I didn't know you had a dog fantastic and then the dog comes over and you're rubbing his neck

while talking to other people and your friends are like roast beef peas gravy roast spuds and the dog is the Yorkshire pudding in the same way that you don't want to go to a party where it's just you and a dog you don't want to have a roast dinner where it's just a Yorkshire pudding. In the same way that you don't want to go to a party where it's just you and a dog. You don't want to have a roast dinner where it's just a Yorkshire pudding. But it's a wonderful addition to a roast dinner. But in Ireland it's a little bit too fucking English. If you eat Yorkshire puddings in Ireland you kind of keep it a little bit of a secret. And if you've ever had Sunday dinner in anyone else's house in Ireland and they suggest Yorkshire puddings this little 800 year old suspicion comes up you don't like just accept it you kind of think did your dad work in England for a while or something I understand that Yorkshire puddings

are delicious but like like why who taught you that? Who showed you that? Who taught you how to, who taught you that Yorkshire puddings were a thing to be eaten at Sunday dinner? And I had a friend growing up. And I went to his house for Sunday dinner. And they brought out the Yorkshire puddings. And that's how I found out his grandparents were English. He had English grandparents. And that's why there were Yorkshire puddings in his house. Like if you go to a carvery. and you get Sunday dinner at a carvery and there's Yorkshire puddings

it feels the same as getting a pint in a Wetherspoons in Ireland. Nobody in Ireland drinks in a Wetherspoons with a fully clear conscience. Now there's the legitimate argument. They're this huge big chain. They put small publicans out of business. The dude who runs them was all pro-Brexit. There's that legitimate side of it. But in Ireland, when someone goes to a Wetherspoons because their drinks are really cheap,

something deeper comes up and that feeling is, it's what we call in Ireland, taking the soup. During the Irish famine of the 1840s, when people were starving, these Protestant organisations went around the place with free soup to Catholics and said, I know you're starving, but we'll give you free soup if you become a Protestant. And this exists within us culturally as this feeling of being a traitor. So when you're drinking a Wetherspoons in Ireland, this little hum of taking the soup comes up. You're like, I know these pints are really cheap, but at what cost? And the same thing happens with Yorkshire puddings. Now, with the Wetherspoons thing, like I said,

there's actually a legitimate argument there. But with Yorkshire puddings, that's completely irrational. Completely irrational. I wanted to investigate this feeling within myself. Why was I in Dunn's embarrassed about going to someone who works there and says, where are the Yorkshire puddings? I haven't seen them in two weeks.

Where are they? Why do I feel like I'm asking for condoms? It's like I was waiting to be judged. I think part of it is simply the name. Yorkshire puddings aren't like oh la-di-da how fancy it's not that it's the name just sounds really really English

like Yorkshire sounds really the word shire is in there so it sounds mad English to us and then pudding is also quite an English sounding word so they sound quite English the other thing too and I noticed this when I had

them on my plate because I put I tested this out I felt anxious about the presence of my Yorkshire pudding and its proximity to the lovely bright green peas that I had on the plate. I noticed that when I would situate Yorkshire puddings on my Sunday roast, I'd actually be keeping them far away from the peas. Now this wasn't a conscious process. But when I interrogated it, I think the greenness of the peas represented Ireland. Then the other thing that comes up as a source of guilt is

Yorkshire puddings are carbohydrates. It's bread. It's carbohydrates. But the carbohydrates on my Irish roast dinner are spuds. They're potatoes. And when you eat a Sunday dinner, which is a lavish celebratory dinner that you have on a Sunday, and your potatoes are present, you're Irish and it's in Ireland you do feel a little bit proud of the potato you feel a bit Jesus Christ millions of

people died because this crop failed as a result of British policy and it reduced our population by half and isn't it lovely today to sit down for a Sunday dinner and to eat this potato and then you bring the Yorkshire pudding in and now it's a competing carbohydrate and it feels like I'm cheating on the potato with a Yorkshire pudding. This very English synthetic potato. This changeling potato. I know all of this is fucking nuts, but I'm trying to unravel and interrogate the unconscious processes of my culinary experience. And you know what I'm talking about. If you're having a Sunday dinner in Ireland, the thought of introducing Yorkshire puddings, it just, it feels a bit, is this okay? Is this allowed? And to contrast that with,

Is this okay? Is this allowed? And to contrast that with, let's say cranberry sauce. That's an American thing. We in Ireland do not have cranberry sauce with turkey dinners or Christmas dinners. The Simpsons brought that in, in the early 90s. We all know that episode where Bart has a can of cranberry sauce and he pours it out and it's gelatinized. And that's stuck in all of our heads. And all of us

went that looks fucking weird I want to try it so most Irish households if they're having a Christmas dinner most Irish households now will have cranberry sauce there for whoever wants to try it and some people will even do it for a Sunday dinner if they're having chicken, they just get cranberry sauce. And cranberry sauce feels like a fun, quirky novelty. It's like, ah, those mad yanks. They love sugar, don't they? It's like they're having jam with their dinner. Do you want some? Yeah, fuck it, I'll try it.

Oh, that's quite nice. But Yorkshire pudding? There's a darker resistance at play and it's colonial. And it shouldn't be, because it's not like mad posh food it's not like eaten mess eaten mess have you ever had eaten mess it's fucking unbelievable it is incredible it's delicious i've never had it in ireland i've gotten it over in england in marks and spencer eaten mess is a dessert that was made in that really, really posh private English school, Eton, where all the prime ministers come from. And it's meringue, fresh strawberries, fresh cream

and strawberry syrup, just like cracked up in a mess in a bowl. And it's astounding. Nobody in Ireland is serving Eton mess to anybody. You might as well just attend the coronation. You might as well solemnly jettison a marmalade sandwich at the dead queen's gate. Like the only way in Ireland you'd eat Eton mess is if we give it our own name. You'd have to call it a strawberry headbutt. And if you think I'm going mad about this shit, listen to the podcast I did about the history of the Irish summer salad. I went deep into the history of the Irish summer salad. You know the one that you get on a hot day, where it's a boiled egg, a bit of cheese, a bit of cucumber, a bit of ham.

The Irish summer salad. I went into that history in depth. That used to be called an English garden salad. And it was served in the big houses of Ireland. The colonising houses of Ireland. It was what English landlords ate in Ireland. While everyone fucking starved. And then Irish servants who worked in the big house.

Would reconstruct it from scraps from the English table. It developed, we copied it and made it our own and that's the Irish summer salad. We don't even have a name for it. It's just the thing your ma makes when she says it's too hot to turn on an oven. But no one's calling it an English garden salad. But with Yorkshire puddings, I don't think it's fair for us to attach an unconscious, dark, colonial threat to it. Because Yorkshire pudding, it's a delicious working class food. From the north of England, Sunday roasts became a thing in the industrial revolution. Amongst people in the north of England, people who suddenly found themselves getting work in coal mines or factories, they were still poor, but they had enough money to have a nice dinner on a Sunday.

And it came about as a result of the length of Protestant sermons on Sundays in the north of England. So people who would have been working in a mine, working in a factory, they'd go to Sunday service on a Sunday morning and they'd put roast beef, potatoes, vegetables into their coal oven. They'd go to church and the length of Protestant Sunday Mass was how long it took for that food to cook in the oven. So then they'd all come home from church and eat their dinner that cooked in the oven. But Yorkshire pudding was made

because these people couldn't really afford enough beef to satisfy the entire family. So they made these puffed pastries out of wheat flour, eggs and lard and they made the puddings when they came home from church. And the oven was mad hot. And just these huge Yorkshire puddings would bloom in the oven. Because it was wheat flour.

It had all this gluten. So that's why it's so chewy. And the people of Yorkshire made this. Because they didn't have enough meat. And this was a way to fill themselves up with something delicious and I've only had a real actual Yorkshire pudding once I was over in London and I had Sunday dinner

in a person's house and their ma made actual real homemade Yorkshire puddings from fucking scratch and they were huge so the ones that I buy the Aunt Bessie's ones the frozen ones that you put in the oven,

they're not even real Yorkshire puddings. But I was in the supermarket, freezing cold, because I'd been thinking about all of this, and then I said, fuck it. Fuck this. I like Yorkshire puddings. They're delicious. They're tasty. Fuck all this bullshit.

And I walked up to the person in the supermarket and I said you haven't had any Yorkshire puddings in two weeks what's going on where are they and then the person said to me supply issues because of Brexit Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings are made over in Leeds in Yorkshire and because of Brexit and all the difficulties that that has created in exporting things from Britain and bringing them over here we've had a huge shortage of products of not just Aunt Bessie's but anything from Birdseye so then I went home disappointed and started thinking about Aunt Bessie and thinking about the the little cartoon of the woman on the front of the Yorkshire Puddings And thinking about the little cartoon of the woman on the front of the Yorkshire Puddings.

Who's making the Yorkshire Puddings and thinking to myself. I wonder if she was a real person at one time. And I started feeling bad for poor old Aunt Bessie. Who probably started this Yorkshire Pudding business years and years ago. I started feeling really sad that the people of Yorkshire can't export their Yorkshire Puddings to Ireland. Then I found myself on Aunt Bessie's website. I thought about ringing the industrial estate in Hull, where they're made. And then I found out there's no Aunt Bessie, she never existed. She's just a mascot that was invented in the 70s for branding.

And Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings, they used to be called Triton Triton Yorkshire Puddings and they had to change the name and the reason they had to change the name from Triton Yorkshire Puddings to Aunt Bessie's is because Triton reminded everybody of

Trident Intercontinental Ballistic Nuclear Missiles which are the British Army's arsenal of nuclear missiles to defend themselves during the cold war so Aunt Bessie was invented as a character because whenever anyone was buying the Triton Yorkshire puddings they were just thinking a nuclear war so you can't really separate things like military power and colonialism from the food on your plate because it's all a human story and I've decided what I'm going to do next Sunday because I can't get any Aunt Bessie's

Yorkshire puddings. I'm going to make Yorkshire puddings from scratch but I'm going to decolonize it. I'm going to see if I can make it with potato flour. Not a hundred percent potato flour because the wheat is quite important but But I'm going to incorporate potato flour into it. And hopefully it still puffs up the way a Yorkshire pudding does. And if it's successful I'm going to call it a Brexit ball sack.

Because there is something testicular about Yorkshire puddings. They're like the bollock of the meat and two veg. The outer casing of the testicle, the withery skin rather than the gonads. And then I remember what the person in the supermarket said. They said we can't import any Aunt Bessie's products and we've had difficulty with all Bard's Eye products in general getting them into Ireland. There's a supply issue. And then I found

out that Bard's Eye actually own Aunt Bessie's and so then I started thinking about Captain Bard's Eye and I couldn't stop thinking about Captain Bard's Eye so I'm going to speak about Captain Bard's Eye after the ocarina pause don't have an ocarina, what do I have? I've got a copy of Angela's Ashes Angela's Ashes

written by Frank McCourt. People shit on this book. I don't know why. Won a Pulitzer Prize. It's about Limerick. I have it in hard copy because I couldn't get it on e-book. It's not available on e-book at all. Got a hard copy of Angela's Ashes.

An incredibly well written book very well written book in particular the bits where Frank McCourt writes in the first person from when he was a child and he writes it from a child's point of view with a child's language

I love that it reminds me of The Butcher Boy by Pat McCabe it reminds me a little bit of Ulysses. There's great storytelling, there's great writing. I like Angela's Ashes, I think it's a great book. So what I'm going to do, and you're going to hear an advert, I'm just going to hit myself into the head with a copy of Angela's Ashes and you're going to hear an advert for something, okay?

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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 Centre in Hamilton at 7.30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game. And you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.

Thank fuck it's not the hardback. That was the hitting myself into the head with a copy of Angela's Ashes Pause. You would have heard an advert there for something. I don't know what it was. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast

this podcast is my full-time job this is how i earn a living this is how i pay my rent the patreon support allows me the time to fail the time to fuck up and the time to deliver the best podcast that i can possibly deliver to you each week. If this podcast brings you solace, joy, entertainment, distraction, whatever, just please consider paying me for the work that I put into it. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it because you can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free.

So everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. Also, it keeps the podcast independent. I'm not in the pocket of any advertiser. Nobody can tell me what to do. Nobody can say it to me. We need more numbers.

We need you to have more listeners. Platform a fascist be controversial advertisers don't want to hear i'm going to do a podcast this week about the colonial anxiety experience around yorkshire puddings unless i'm actually sponsored by aunt bessie's which i'm not because the first thing they'd say to me would be don't mention that we had to invent Aunt Bessie because people thought that our previous name sounded like nuclear missiles and don't mention that we have

supply issues because of Brexit but yeah, Patreon keeps this podcast independent and support all independent podcasts that you enjoy monetarily or just by word of mouth just by sharing the podcast online liking it leaving reviews my brand new collection of short stories topographia hibernica is out in november and you

can pre-order it now if you want the link for the pre-orders go to my instagram blind by boat club and my pinned story on my profile that's where you'll get all the links for pre-ordering my book and you can do it internationally if you're international like fucking australia or america use the forbidden planet link in the uk you use the waterstones link and then in Ireland Kenny's Bookshop link or Eason's and I think Kenny's Bookshop does international too. Let's plug some live podcasts. On the 26th of August I am in the Cork Opera House at the Cork Podcast Festival. Come to that gig in the Cork Opera House and also check out the Cork Podcast Festival in general. And I say that because the two lads that run that festival, Joe and Ed, are

unbelievably sound, brilliant promoters. And they do great things for Cork and they do great things for entertainment. They're the type of promoters that will put on a gig that they know that they will lose money on just to platform the art. And that's

a rare thing. And that's why I absolutely love them. On the 28th of August. I'm up in Vicar Street in Dublin. Vicar Street gigs are always an unbelievable crack. Come along to that. Then. Birmingham on September the 1st.

I'm at the Mosley Folk Festival. Can't wait for that. 9th of September. I am in. The Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire. Looking forward to Dun La Laoghaire I'll probably call into the Wetherspoons I won't I'll be gone home to bed and then in November on the 18th I'm in the waterfront up in Belfast can't wait for that and then I've got a UK tour that I haven't announced yet there's going to be a UK tour that I haven't announced yet but there's going to be a UK tour before Christmas

but I want to talk about Captain Bard's Eye what got me thinking about Captain Bard's Eye was Aunt Bessie you know you think of these mascots with food and you like to think this was a real person like Paul Newman with his salad dressings

and after learning that Aunt Bessie was fabricated made up because the previous name reminded people of nuclear missiles and then I found out that Aunt Bessie was owned by Bardseye I started to think there's no way Captain Bardseye is a real person no fucking way this white bearded old man who hangs around ships with children and gives them fish he can't be real is he and he's not captain bard's eye is an invention he's a mascot he was an invention by marketing he's he's santa claus he's santa claus for fish that's what captain bard's eye what Captain Bards Eye is. They took, Bards Eye took the image and feel and branding of Santa Claus and put him on a ship.

And that's what Captain Bards Eye is. But, he's also not. There was a real person called Clarence Bards Eye who founded Bards Eye. Now I used to, and this makes sense, because when I was a kid and Bard's

Eye was, they're a huge fucking brand. They're massive. So you couldn't escape Bard's Eye as a kid and you couldn't escape the adverts with Captain Bard's Eye. But as well as a child, I didn't like thinking about Bard's Eyes when I'm trying to envision some delicious fish fingers I don't want to eat the eye of a bird I want to eat all other parts of the bird except it's eyeballs I never want to eat a bird's eye and that was the thing that got me

investigating really because I thought what a silly name to call a food company why would you call a food company. Why would you call a food company something disgusting. There has to be a decent. There has to be a good reason behind this. And the reason is. It's a fella by the name of Clarence Bardzai.

Who really existed. And it's a fascinating fucking rabbit hole. And it's also an example of. Nominative determinism. There was a fella called Clarence Birdseye. He was American. He was born in 1886. And he was like a biologist and a naturalist in the American frontier. The American frontier is when America was colonized by Europeans, which happened on the East Coast around Boston, New York, the colonizers decided,

this is our land. Fuck anyone who's here already. We don't consider these people to be real people. We're going to take everything they have. We're going to eradicate them. This is our land. And what the colonisers said was, OK, we've got this area here on the east coast,

but everything west of this, we know that it's fucking massive, but we don't really know what it is. So go forth into the frontier and, quote-unquote, discover. Do whatever you want. Discover this huge, great land, and whatever you whatever you find take it and it's yours and that's American frontierism and the ideology of American frontierism and I speak about it a lot is it really underpins modern American capitalism. Frontierism is the ideology of the American dream. See before American frontierism you had like British colonialism. Now colonialism is go forth quote-unquote discover eradicate everybody and take all their shit but only if you're rich

and that's British colonialism. go forth and take whatever the fuck you want but rich people only rich people can do that and take what they find with American frontierism it was different with American frontierism it was more so long as you're white go forth and take whatever the fuck you want we don't care if your parents were peasants in Germany or in the Netherlands or England or Ireland we don't care if you're dark poor this is America go forth into the frontier and whatever you find you can take it and you can call that yours and you can become rich so that's frontierism so long as you're white anybody can have whatever they want if you'll work hard enough and you can become wealthy and that underpins the ideology of

the american dream and american capitalism so clarence bardzai was one of these frontierists he was a biologist and a hunter in 1911 he was hired by the united states department of agriculture to go to the area of montana and the rocky mountains which would have been the wild frontier undiscovered american land and what the u. US wanted to do with Montana was exploit it for two things. Agriculture, so that meant grazing land, growing crops, and also to take all the, to cut down all the trees for wood to build things. Now the people who lived there were

the Salish indigenous American people, otherwise known as the Flathead Indians, but they called themselves the Salish indigenous American people, otherwise known as the Flathead Indians, but they called themselves the Salish people. And they were being pushed out of the Rocky Mountains by Europeans, in particular Europeans who were there for logging. And something strange happened when Europeans started to exploit the logging industry in the Rocky Mountains.

exploit the logging industry in the rocky mountains they started to develop a very extreme illness that became known as rocky mountain spotted fever and this illness it caused an extreme rash and fever and it killed people and even in some people who got an extreme dose of Rocky Mountain spotted fever they would turn into they'd look like zombies if they survived the fever they could be disfigured for the rest of their lives or parts their body could fall off or they'd get gangrene this was a really extreme disease that was killing a lot of European people, who particularly in the logging industry around 1911 in Montana and the Rocky Mountains. Now this disease wasn't very prevalent amongst the indigenous Salish people that were there. It was something that really started to impact Europeans in particular who were involved in logging. Not necessarily because the indigenous people had an immunity but because

different attitude towards exploitation of the land. The indigenous people weren't engaging in large-scale industrial logging and going deep deep into the forest. The Europeans were and the workers were dying with this horrendous disease. So Clarence Bardzai as a naturalist was sent by the US Department of Agriculture to be a frontiersman and to go deep into the area of infection and try and figure out what is causing people to get this disease and to die. What they found was that this disease was being caused by a tick, a specific type of tick that lived on certain animals and bit human beings, specifically the ones that were in the logging industry and that were deep in the

forest. So what Bardseye did, and this is why I say nominate of the terminism, he became a hunter. Even though he was a biologist, he was there in the Rocky Mountains with a gun and traps and killing every single animal he saw so that he could skin their bodies and then collect the ticks on their bodies and study them and give reports back to the US government. And Bardseye's findings as a biologist and a naturalist were, yeah, there's this tick out here, and when this tick bites people, it causes this horrendous fever. So what we need to do is, here's a list of animals,

basically every fucking animal there. We just need to kill every single animal, and then the ticks will disappear, and also the agriculture, the sheep and stuff will need to be dipped in a tick bath. Here's what I find interesting about it. Even though this man was a naturalist and a biologist, the reports that he was given back about the Rocky Mountains and Rocky Mountain fever, his report exemplified the specific capitalistic colonialism of the frontierist ideology.

Nothing was for the benefit of the natural order. Nothing was for the benefit of the environment or biodiversity. His report basically said, kill everything so that we can best serve the exploitation of the land, the logging industry and agriculture. And that was his mindset. So after Clarence Bardzai was finished in Montana he went up to north northeast Canada the area around Newfoundland and Labrador which is a mad area very barren very cold freezing tundra I flew over it when I was coming back from Vancouver and I had wifi on the plane and while I was flying over this barren land

I was just reading about how it's a mad landscape but Clarence Bardzai went up there as a fire trapper and also as a naturalist but you might be thinking, what the fuck does this have to do with my fish fingers? What does this have to do with Captain Birdseye? This is about 1915 or earlier, about 1912, 1913. And when Clarence Birdseye was in Labrador, this

almost near the North Pole, this huge vast area of Canada where it's very cold, food was hard to come by because it was so freezing all the time. And the way that Europeans preserved food in Newfoundland and Labrador was pretty old school. They were using salt. So if they caught fish and wanted to have a stockpile of fish for the year, they salted their cod and they salted their herring and they preserved it that way. But finding access to fresh food was nearly impossible because it was so cold all the time. And frozen food wasn't really a thing then.

People had gotten food and frozen it. thing then people had gotten food and frozen it but what Bard's eye started to realize was that if you freeze a fish the fish freezes but then when you thaw it it just doesn't taste like fresh meat blood drips out of it it's kind of mushy and he was wondering why does freezing not work what's going on here why is the best way to preserve fish is to salt it and why doesn't freezing work why is meat disgusting when you freeze it and he started to think about ice crystals and how ice forms and what really intrigued him this is a world where refrigeration doesn't really exist. Because it's the early 1900s. So when stuff froze, it's because it was really cold outside.

And something Clarence Bard's eye used to be intrigued about when he was up in Labrador in Newfoundland was, Do you ever have a beer and you put it in the freezer? And you take it out and the beer is freezing cold and you can see into that bottle of beer and you can see that even though this beer, which is sealed, is a liquid and you can see the liquid, the second you open that beer up, it freezes in front of your very eyes. Bards Eye started to realize that himself when he was up in Newfoundland where the temperature might be minus 40. If he left water in the beaker the night before he'd look into the beaker and see that the water was liquid but the second he poured it out into his cup it turned to ice and he was intrigued by this and he couldn't understand it. And then he looked at the practices of the indigenous people that lived in that part of Canada the Inuit people when Inuit people would catch fish out of a hole so they're ice fishing and it's minus 40 so that's a level of cold that we can't even understand in Ireland when the indigenous Inuit people

would catch a fish they'd pull the fish out of the water and literally the second the fish comes out of the water, it would freeze in the air instantly. It would just instantly freeze in seconds. were able to freeze a fish in the air within a second and they could keep that fish frozen in that state for a year and they eat that a year later and it tastes like it's fresh it tastes like it just came out of the water and the way that the Inuit people were using the freezing cold air to freeze their fish they didn't have this frozen fish meat that was all gloopy and that was full of blood and the way that they were doing it it tasted fresh and amazing and what he started to realize was it was about crystals when you freeze something slowly the crystals that form gradually are large like you'll know this yourself if you get a steak or something and you just fuck

it into your own freezer at home when you take it out afterwards it's never the same it's not the same because what happens is it freezes slowly and these large ice crystals form in the meat and what they do is they actually break apart the meat so then when you thaw it it's like it's been digested by the meat and it's mushy and it's not nice. Bards Eye saw the Inuit people freezing things really quickly and this didn't happen because the quicker you freeze something the smaller the crystals that form. So he then left the area of Newfoundland and Labrador and went back to America and it was the 1920s and he couldn't stop thinking about this. He kept looking at how fish

was being prepared all around him in America. In the 1910s you couldn't transport meat. If you caught a cod in the 1910s in America off the coast of Canada you couldn't catch that cod in Canada then bring it to New York a week later and expect it to be fresh you couldn't catch a piece of meat in Boston and

bring it up to New York meat even frozen meat degraded on the way by the time it got the people's table so fresh food was an incredibly expensive commodity and then Bardzai kept thinking back to remember when I was up there with the Inuit people and it was minus 40 and their fish would just freeze in the air in two seconds and it tasted fresh a year later how can I do that how can I do that in America? So he went to an ice cream factory and asked for access that they're like cold as fucking freezer. And he developed the technology of flash freezing. He developed a way to freeze meat and vegetables like peas

to freeze them instantly so that crystals didn't form and then to store them as frozen food so that now you could freeze something in two seconds ship it all the way across the world and you could still eat it a year later so that's what Clarence Bardzai did and he founded the company Bardzai and they pioneered the industrialization of flash freezing food on site. So now when peas were being picked, the peas were frozen the second they come out of the ground. When fish was being caught in the ocean, the fish was being flash frozen in refrigerators on the trawler and what this did it gave the world access to fresh food via flash freezing which then instantly made it incredibly cheap so now

everybody could get cod herring haddock peas, whatever the fuck you want, you had it fresh on your table for real cheap because it was being flash frozen. But to take it back to that frontierist American capitalist mindset, this is what led to overfishing, biodiversity collapse. Bardsite took indigenous knowledge from the Inuit people but applied that knowledge to endless frontierist capitalism and just like when he was in the Rocky Mountains doing those biology reports for the US government in 1911 and basically saying kill everything because this is the best way for agriculture and industry to proceed he also took that mindset with his flash freezing and then you end up with overfishing and species

of fish disappearing and land being cleared to grow peas that everybody could afford so on the one hand everybody gets access to fresh food, flash frozen at an affordable price. But the real price there is what's happened to our environment and what's happened to the collapse of species. And that's how we end up with Birdseye. That's what Birdseye is, Clarence Birdseye. And then Captain Birdseye was half based on him, but was a mascot that was invented in the 1930s, I believe,

to sell Bards Eye products, who were a huge corporation, who now own Aunt Bessie's. And just like Aunt Bessie was invented because the original name Triton reminded people of Trident ballistic missiles, Captain Bards Eye, in the 2000s, they had to change Captain Bardzai. Captain Bardzai was always this older man like Santa Claus who used to hang around with a bunch of kids. But in the 2000s, people in Britain in particular began to panic about paedophiles. And people just felt, Captain Birdseye, he's a little bit like a paedophile. And in 2004, there was this old man who looked like Captain Birdseye,

and I think dressed a bit like him, went calling to people's doors asking about what their kids ate in Scotland. Now I think he was someone who actually worked for a food company and he looked like Captain Bardzai but the people in this neighbourhood in Scotland became convinced that he was actually a sex offender and it led to a little bit of a moral panic. So they changed Captain Bardzai from being this older man with a white beard into being a younger man and now I think right now Captain Bardsy is a woman so that there is the colonial frontierist

history of your fish fingers I'll be back next week I don't know what with alright rub a dog, salute a worm kiss a crow dog bless God bless. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th,

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