The Blindboy Podcast - The History of Brown Sauce and Door Handles

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

The History of Brown Sauce and Door Handles  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Don't stand on the Spaniard's ankle, you manky anthonies. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first podcast, please consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this episode. Because I think this episode might be a little bit odd. I want to thank everybody for booking tickets to my tour of England and Scotland. It nearly sold out in three days. and Scotland. It nearly sold out. In three days.

It's like 80% sold out. Edinburgh is completely sold out. I booked the assembly rooms. I used to dream. Of gigging the fucking assembly rooms. The last time I was in Edinburgh. Would have been when I was with the rubber bandits. During the Edinburgh Festival

and the last time I gigged there I gigged in maybe 2015 and we used to gig this really tiny venue called the Gilded Balloon and in the festival there was this venue called the Assembly Rooms and that's where the bigger acts would play

and I used to dream I used to fucking dream of gigging the Assembly Rooms and I used to dream I used to fucking dream of gigging the assembly rooms and I never thought it was possible I would have considered it a bit too far-fetched I haven't been in Edinburgh like I said since 2015 and even when my agent booked the assembly rooms for me this month to do my podcast in November I I was like. The assembly rooms are you mad? I used to walk past that place every single night. On the way to the Gilded Balloon venue.

Thinking. Jeez I'll never gig there. And it fucking sold out in 8 hours. My gig at the assembly rooms in Edinburgh sold out. In 8 hours. So thank you so much to my listeners in Edinburgh. This recent tour. That I announced of Scotland and England is making me realise like I'm not really an Irish podcast anymore.

Like I'm always an Irish podcaster. But most of my audience is outside of Ireland. I wouldn't sell out Dublin in eight hours, put it that way. I wouldn't sell out Limerick. I have a gig in Limerick. I think next February. In the Lime Tree Theatre. Which I think is.

It's like 450 seats. I don't think I'm going to sell that out. In Limerick. In my own city. But thank you everyone in Edinburgh. And. And all the other cities. Not in Scotland.

The cities in England. Thank you to all the cities in England. But the tour is almost sold out in a fucking weekend but you can get you can come along to Manchester, Liverpool, London Coventry

and Edinburgh is sold out I'm really looking forward to going back to Edinburgh because I have so many fond memories of the place I gigged the Edinburgh Comedy Festival twice twice in my career and that was the Edinburgh Festival which I first gigged in 2011 I believe with the Rubber Bandits. That's what made us go from an unprofessional live act to a professional live act because before the Edinburgh Festival we'd just been gigging like sweaty drunk gigs in Ireland and they weren't really even gigs

because the audience the audience at the time that we'd be doing gigs at like 12 o'clock at night and everyone was shit-faced including us But when we gigged the Edinburgh Festival, it was like, you're going to play in this small venue. It's like 100 seats. Most of the audience won't have a clue who you are because they're people who are here for the Edinburgh Festival. And you have to gig in the same room every single night for an entire month. 30 performances every single night. an entire month 30 performances every single night

and it was like boot camp it was like comedy boot camp each night playing to about 100 people and most of them having a fucking clue who you are or what your act is so you have to win them over and they were an international audience it wasn't just people from Scotland

they were people from all over the world and there were other performers who were performing at the festival some nights you'd have hecklers other nights you'd have people who'd be drunk other nights you'd have an amazing audience and everyone is sound but you had to learn in the moment on stage to do the same act every night but adjust appropriately in the moment in the service of entertainment and you come out of it polished as fuck afraid of nothing and a feeling of being comfortable on stage so I always have very fond memories of Edinburgh as a city because of that Edinburgh is where I learned the craft of live performance because it is a craft it's one thing being comfortable up on stage in a room full of people it's another thing to truly understand through

experience the collective empathy of a room what to say to make an entire room laugh at once. Only literal lived experience will give you that. I'm also fond of Edinburgh because I almost had a psychotic episode there. And I say almost because I didn't have a psychotic episode, but rather two bizarre things happened to me on the same day which made me question reality. So this happened at my first Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

I was still in my 20s. I hadn't much experience with touring, proper touring as an act and I was lucky because I had a tour manager who was about 25 years older than me and this tour manager had seen it all. He'd toured with acts for fucking years. Before I went to Edinburgh, which would have been 30 nights of gigs, so that's a lot of gigging, he gave me a beautiful piece of advice. See, here's the issue with gigging. When you're an act and you do a gig and you're playing in a venue and it's a party environment and you have the rush of the audience and you're in a place where alcohol is being served. If you're not careful,

every gig can become a party. You get off stage, you feel amazing, you're feeling the rush and then you want to reward yourself with alcohol. If you do that for every fucking gig, you will destroy your physical and mental health. Addiction is very very very high in the entertainment business and my tour manager said to me I've toured all around the world I've done

a month in Japan and I actually don't remember it. I don't remember touring a month in Japan because I spent all the time getting shit faced and it's one of the biggest regrets of my life and he said to me you're gonna go to Edinburgh you're gonna do 30 gigs donfaced and it's one of the biggest regrets of my life and he said to me you're gonna go to Edinburgh you're gonna do 30 gigs don't turn it into one giant party treat it as a job pick one night a week maybe to have a few pints but the rest of the nights treat it like a job don't go drinking so that's what I did I decided I'm gonna do the fucking Edinburgh festival I'm gonna gig six nights a week and only on my day off am I going to go and have a lot of crack. And my reward was if you don't

drink, you've got your days free. You can get up early. You can go for runs. You can join a gym and you can go to a museum every single day. Because Edinburgh has loads of wonderful museums. So I made the decision. That's what I'm fucking doing. And so what I did. I stuck to the fizzy drinks. I treated the gigs like a job. I went home to bed at a reasonable hour.

And made the most of my time. But about four or five days into this tour. I was staying in this really old Edinburgh apartment. I'm talking a building maybe 200 years old. It was very close to a statue. A statue of a famous dog called Greyfriars Bobby. Who was a dog who stayed on his owner's grave until he died. And he became famous so the people of Edinburgh built a statue

for him which is a fantastic statue much better than here in Limerick where we've got a statue of Terry Wogan where he looks like he's holding a teenager's penis instead of a microphone but I was staying in this real old building single glazed window shit and one morning I wake up the room is dark and it's bright outside and as I open my eyes I look at the wall the wall of the bedroom and I start seeing shapes I start seeing shapes

on the fucking wall weird flickers of light and then I focus more and I see like flashes of humans faces like people's fucking faces now immediately I freak out I don't think about it rationally I just go oh my god that was fucking terrifying I open the curtains and I go fuck sake what was that Jesus Christ and I tell myself maybe maybe

you you weren't fully awake. You thought you woke up. But you were halfway between dream and awakening. And that's why you saw the shapes on the walls. That's what it is. So I said grand I thought nothing of it. Went about my day. Did my gig that night. Went to bed.

Woke up the next morning. The exact same thing fucking happens. I wake up. I'm lying in bed, the room is dark and there's people's faces on the walls the faces of human beings moving across the walls people's faces

I do everything, I pinch myself I go for the classic, pinch yourself, wake yourself up I still see people's faces on the wall different humans jackets clothes I rub my eyes I say to myself you're awake you're awake observe this look at it I tried to use CBT and it's like no I'm staring at the fucking wall here and I'm seeing people and I must be going insane I must be going absolutely fucking mad these are

full-blown hallucinations now what I should have done was taken out my phone and taken a photograph of it but you know what back then this would have been early 2011 we didn't really think that way about phones I'd only had a smartphone a couple of months. As a culture, we hadn't arrived at your phone as a thing that you can take photographs of to take notes. I think I still probably walked around with a pen and pencil that took notes down. I hadn't considered my phone as this thing that I can document and record with. Also, I was fucking terrified. There was a very old graveyard directly behind the building.

The graveyard that that dog is buried in. Greyfriars. That's the name of the graveyard. It's a famous really really old graveyard. It's like 600 years old graveyard in Edinburgh and I was basically staying there on that fucking graveyard. So I'm there in my bed head in hands staring at people's faces moving real people's faces moving around the wall of my fucking bedroom and I wasn't entertaining ghosts instead I was going ah it's finally happening you've gone mad you've gone mad now this is what it is now this is the rest of your life it was also on an unconscious level a kind of a self-sabotage within me I was really proud to be at the Edinburgh festival doing these gigs I was in my 20s only a few years previously I would have had that agoraphobia my mental health

would have been very bad I was quite proud of myself being like look at you over here fucking gigging in edinburgh touring this is amazing and that deep part of myself the part of me that didn't believe in me manifested as the anxiety of you are schizophrenic you're you have schizophrenia now and you knew this was gonna happen you knew when you had that anxiety what's going to happen with you is you're going to lose your mind and now it's happening just when things are going well so I opened the curtains and I left the apartment and walked around Edinburgh fucking terrified terrified of the human faces that were floating around my bedroom and I got a feeling of an anxiety attack and then I went and meditated and I focused on my bedroom and I got a feeling of an anxiety attack and then

I went and meditated and I focused on my breathing what I didn't do as well as I didn't go to anybody who was working with me and say there's faces there's human faces floating around my bedroom because I was I was too ashamed I was too embarrassed and I was terrified that their reaction to it would have confirmed that you've gone mad, you've gone fucking insane. So I'd left the apartment, and I'd gotten myself a cam, and I said, look, fuck it, we're going to have a nice day, and you're going to go to a museum. You're going to go to a museum, and you're going to get your mind off this shit.

If it happens again, you might have to go to a doctor. So I went to the museum to take my mind off it I think it was the Edinburgh Museum because I fucking adore museums I love museums that's a real place of calm and joy for me and when I go to museums I'll spend hours in there just walking around and I like to be in museums listening to music in my headphones that's what I love doing, I adore it and in this museum I was walking around all the different it was history of Edinburgh

there was a lot of industrial revolution shit I'm listening to music in my headphones and then I arrive in the section of the museum about coal mines so I'm in the coal mine section of the museum going wow this so I'm in the coal mine section of the museum going wow this is cool but I was listening to music I think I was listening to groveshark because we didn't have

spotify yet but basically a random playlist of all the songs in the world like internet radio and the second I walk into the coal mining exhibition the song working in a coal mine by Lee Darcy comes on my headphones and at that point see I'm already very very freaked out because there's faces floating around my bedroom I'm already incredibly freaked out and now I'm in a coal mining exhibition and the song working in a coal mine just came on my headphones and this is before algorithms this is before your phone tracking you around where you're walking and feeding you content depending on your location it was way before that or even thinking about that this was just an insane coincidence and I went right okay you've gone fully mad now either the world has

gone insane or you are insane because this is too much of a coincidence and I had a full-blown fucking panic attack I had a panic attack in the museum because reality was crumbling around me and when you have anxiety like that I didn't have access to rational thought I couldn't have any measured opinions about what what was happening I couldn't maintain any skepticism my emotions started to drive my thoughts and I just as far as I was concerned some some supernatural things are happening either I'm gone mad or I'm being haunted by something but shit's getting really weird and it's so weird I can't speak to anyone about it so I walk around Edinburgh

in this panic rubbing my hands together scattered thoughts full on anxiety and I get hungry and I say well maybe I need to go and get something to eat I need to go and get something to fucking eat so I went into a chip shop

the famous Edinburgh chip shops that they. So I went into a chip shop, the famous Edinburgh chip shops that they have. And I went into a chip shop and ordered, I think it was battered sausage and chips. I wasn't even thinking. And the person behind the counter said, do you want sauce on your chips? So I said, yeah, assuming he meant ketchup. And then he took out this weird bottle, this weird plastic bottle. It wasn't, it wasn't vinegar. It wasn't ketchup.

It was something new. It was brown, but thicker than vinegar, but not as thick as brown sauce. And he drenched my chips with it. I'd never seen this before. And again, because of the mourning I'd had, I didn't think about the sauce in a rational way but rather considered it part of my new supernatural reality

like I was in a fucking David Lynch film or something it's like yeah of course he's putting piss on my chips because you've crossed over into some fucking interdimensional realm now and I sat down and I ate a chip and And it was the nicest fucking chip I'd ever tasted in my life because of this sauce. This fucking sauce. I couldn't describe it. I'd never tasted it before. It had the acidity of a lemon. The saltiness. Not of salt, but the faint taste of it you get when you spend too long at the beach

it was vinegar's attractive cousin there was an element of brown sauceness to it I had never tasted chips like this before in my fucking life I had never tasted a condiment like this before in my life and because this brown Edinburgh sauce that they put on all their chips over there, because it was so new and novel and fantastic, it pulled me away from my anxiety, it pulled me away from my anxious thoughts,

and now I was mindfully engaging with my food. I wasn't thinking about the faces that were hovering around my bedroom, I wasn't thinking about the faces that were hovering around my bedroom. I wasn't thinking about the freaky coincidence of the song Working in the Coal Mine coming on my headphones while I was at a coal mine exhibition. I was focused only on what magnificent things were happening inside my mouth. I'd never tasted chips like that before. And then what happens? I start to chill out. I'm enjoying my chips.

I'm no longer experiencing anxiety. So my thoughts become a little bit more rational. And I start to think, back at the museum, there'd been a couple of oil paintings in there. I can't remember what the oil paintings were, but they were portraits from the 17th century. And I started to think about the artist Jan Vermeer who was a Dutch oil painter you'd know Vermeer's work he painted a girl with

the pearl earring and I thought about one of the controversies of how Jan Vermeer painted you see Vermeer's paintings were almost too realistic for the time. Freakishly realistic. They were photorealistic at a time before cameras existed. And if you look at the edges of some of Jan Vermeer's paintings, you can actually see a very subtle distortion, the type of distortion that you'd associate with a lens. And they reckon Vermeer used the thing called a camera obscura which wasn't a camera but he constructed like a little dark room now cameras didn't exist this is the fucking 17th century I think but if Vermeer was painting a portrait of someone he would construct this box in a room and on this box there was a little pinhole and what can happen under the right circumstances

is when you have a dark room and a tiny pinhole in a box when light passes through that in just the right way it can create a crude projection on the wall of everything that's behind that box. It's called a pinhole camera and humans have been doing it for years it's not a camera in that it captures the image but it's it's a real crude type of natural projection that happens in fucking nature and while i'm there in the chip shop eating my chips i start to think maybe that's what's happening in my fucking bedroom back in the apartment maybe that's what's happening maybe whatever way the curtains are in my bedroom or whatever way the old single glazed windows are because the thing is with those old windows

they're really old so the glass has a natural concave within it like a lens and I start to think what if my apartment the bedroom has created a natural pinhole camera and that's why I was seeing faces projected on my fucking wall maybe I'm not gone mental maybe there's no ghosts so I finish my fucking chips and I run back to the apartment and I close the curtains. And lo and behold, what happens? I'm calm and I'm looking and I watch. And all the shapes start to appear on the dark wall of my bedroom. And then I see a car passing on the wall, and then I see people's heads, and I go, fuck me.

My apartment, the window and the curtain create a natural camera obscura, and what's actually happening is that the world outside is projecting on my wall via this very specific strange anomaly that's situated exactly in this bedroom. Isn't that incredible that's amazing i'm not going mad so that's what had happened as bizarre as that sounds

and if you've ever stayed in in an old in an old house that's what had happened the window the windows were really old the glass like real old I don't know how they hadn't fucking broken but the windows were so old that they actually had a concave when I looked closely at the glass it was like a lens it it depressed inwards towards the middle and this created a lens that kind of projected light a little bit and this light from the window then projected through my curtains which had a tiny tiny little bit of light and these exact conditions created a pinhole camera like jan vermeer used to use to paint paintings so what i saw on my wall was this very faint upside down projection of the street outside.

The actual street outside. So I know it sounds insane, but when people would walk past and when cars would go past outside, it projected upside down on my wall. I'd wake up and see it every morning and think I was going insane. I thought I was going utterly mad because there was no rational explanation for it. But if it wasn't for. The strange and unique sauce.

That they put on their chips in Edinburgh. I wouldn't have come to that realisation. Because the sauce was so. Unexpected. And strange and odd. That it forced me into the type of mindfulness. Where my brain could start thinking critically mindfulness where my brain could start thinking critically and my brain could start solving problems and thinking about the faces on my wall

in a rational way rather than the emotional way where I immediately assumed that I'm schizophrenic and that's my fondest memory of Edinburgh my fondest fucking memory. And I haven't tasted Edinburgh chip sauce since 2015, I think. And I can't fucking wait to go back and gig in Edinburgh and get myself some chips and battered sausages with that Edinburgh chip sauce. And I think for that entire festival, I think even up on stage, all I spoke about was the camera obscura that was localised in my bedroom. In fact, if you're a comedian and you were a comedian in Edinburgh in 2011 and you met an Irishman and all he spoke about was the camera obscura in his bedroom, that was probably me. Unless there was another one.

Because I wouldn't have been wearing my bag when I was walking around talking to people, obviously, in social situations. Who did I tell that story to? Do you know what? The dearly departed Sean Hughes. The Irish comedian Sean Hughes. Fucking lovely man. Sean Hughes who would have been properly fucking famous.

Reached out to meet me for a coffee. Because I was in Edinburgh. I didn't know him. Reached out for no reason other than to give me advice on my career that's it no reason other than to give me advice on my career lovely man but I can't wait to taste that Edinburgh chip sauce again and of course I looked into the history of the brown sauce that they serve in Edinburgh and the chip shops because it's only in Edinburgh it's actually

made over in Glasgow but what it is is there's a type of sauce called HP brown sauce. Now we all know that, we have that in Ireland. HP sauce. HP means Houses of Parliament, and on the front of the HP bottle is the Houses of Parliament. HP brown sauce is very interesting because it's so tied in with English colonialism. When the Brits colonised India in the 1800s, India had a very well-established, rich food culture. And the Brits who went over there colonising tasted things in India that blew their minds,

that they just could not taste back home. Spices, curries, chutneys, pickles, the whole shebang. And then when the English colonisers went back to England, they had this crazy taste in their mouth for Indian food. But they didn't have a lot of the ingredients, they didn't write down the recipes. They just had this strong memory of what food tasted like in India. So this huge industry in the 1800s exploded in England where the Brits tried to make food

that reminded them of the taste of India. And there was a grocer in Nottingham called Frederick Gibson and one of his customers who had been to india came back talking to gibson about chutney now if you've been to an indian restaurant you know what chutney is it's fruits and spices in vinegar with sugar it's all the flavors in the world it's an explosion in your mouth now imagine what this was like to some english coloniser who tasted it once in India. This is the 1800s, so you don't have the palette of flavours that we have today. A person who tasted it once in India went, oh my god, that's incredible. Couldn't stop thinking about it, then came back to England and tried to describe the flavour of chutney to a grocer.

So the grocer, Frederick Gibson, said to his customer, just, I'm going to make this. I'm going to write down all these flavours that come into your head and I'm going to try and make this stuff that you had in India. So he tried his best. He got tomatoes, loads of vinegar, garlic, tamarind, which would have been a rare kind of Indian fruit, which would have been a rare kind of Indian fruit and he mixed it all together into this mishmash, fed it to the customer and in the customer's garbled memory, this taste approximated what he remembered chutney to be. And what that is, that's brown sauce. That's HP brown sauce. It's an English coloniser's memory of chutney.

But brown sauce contained all these fancy ingredients and spices and tamarinds, so it was quite expensive. It would have been quite posh in the 1800s. It was the favourite condiment of the upper class. It was the favourite condiment in the Houses of Parliament, that's why it's HP Brown Sauce. But how did this approximation, this strange watery version of brown sauce, end up in my chips when I was in Edinburgh having a panic attack? Well in Edinburgh this sauce is known as chippy sauce and what I do know for sure is that it was started by Italian immigrants who owned chip shops in Edinburgh. Now this is the bit I can't be certain about where I can't find

exact details because I don't know exactly why Italian immigrants ended up opening chip shops in Edinburgh. But I'm going to make a bit of a leap because I do know for certain how Italian immigrants ended up starting chip shops in Ireland because it's a strange little accident that you can trace to one person who arrived in Ireland. See Italian people aren't known for chips. Chips aren't part of Italian cuisine. Potatoes aren't really even that big a deal in Italy. Chips are French.

Pommes frites. French fries. But in 1880. Italy would have been quite poor. And there was a lot of immigrants. People leaving Italy. And going to America. Trying to get away from a poor country

to go to a better one. And in 1880, there was an Italian man called Giuseppe Sarvi. And this poor fucker was like, okay, I'm going to America. I'm leaving Italy. I'm getting on a ship and I'm going to America. It's 1880. So he gets on his ship from Palma in Italy to go to America because it's 1880 he doesn't really even know how long the ship is supposed to go on for so he gets onto the ship in Italy and then the ship makes a stop in Cove in Cork because it's 1880 this is 30 years after the Irish famine Ireland would have been a fucking third world country. Unbelievably poor. So the ship went from Italy.

Stopped in Cork. Because a bunch of equally poor Irish people were also getting onto the ship to go to America. But fucking Giuseppe goes. Oh I must be in America. So he accidentally gets off the ship and arrives in Cork and the ship leaves for America without him and he's there for about three hours going fuck it I thought America would be a bit more fancy than this and I said sorry Giuseppe you're stuck in Ireland now and we're recovering from the potato famine but by 1880 the potato famine was over and we were really happy to have healthy

potatoes back so we'd gone fucking potato mad so Giuseppe is stuck down in Cork so he goes fuck it I'm gonna walk to Dublin so Giuseppe Sarvi walks to Dublin and tries to find work as a labourer and he does his bit for a while as a labourer and he looks around him and he notices Jesus these Irish people don't have much of a food culture they don't have fast food they don't have anything like this back in Italy we have a food culture in Italy if there's hungry people in the street there's people walking around with carts selling hot food so Giuseppe Sarvi decides, it's 1883, I'm in Dublin, these Irish people are very, they're very particular about potatoes, they seem to care an awful amount about potatoes. So Giuseppe Sarvi decides, I'm going to start selling roast potatoes out of a cart and I'm

going to walk around Dublin and sell people roast potatoes. The Irish people are going mad for these spuds. Can't get enough of the spuds that the Italian fella is selling out of a cart. Giuseppe is going, fucking grand, this isn't too bad. I know I was supposed to be in America, but Dublin's not too bad. And I'm the only person selling roast spuds. But the demand is so great that Giuseppe is like, I can't keep up with the demand for these roast spuds. So he starts frying them instead. So now he's making chips and selling chips out of his

cart by the bag and then it gets so popular he opens up the first chip shop in Dublin in Brunswick Street and now he's selling chips to all the Irish. But Giuseppe sends a letter back home to Palma in Italy and says these fucking Irish cunts here are mad for chips. I can't stop selling them. And then everyone back in his village goes what? I'm coming to Dublin. So then you get these Italian families coming from one area in Italy, Palma, and they now all come to Ireland to set up chip shops because the Irish are mad for chips. And that's why in Ireland, Limerick, Dublin, Cork, wherever, if you've got a proper institution, all decent fish and chip shop anywhere in Ireland, it's an Italian family that are running it. So we know that to be true. We know the reason Italian people got involved in fishing

chips is because that fella accidentally went to Cork instead of America and that's what started a culture of Italian people owning chip shops and I'm going to wager that that same culture is how Edinburgh ended up with a bunch of chip shops also owned by Italian people. So how did Edinburgh end up with this famous chippy sauce that they have? Well, the story that I found was an Italian chip shop owner, I think in the 1960s, had a chip shop in Edinburgh and he meant to order a bunch of ketchup from his supplier in Glasgow and the supplier in Glasgow sent him HP brown sauce by accident. The chip shop owner panicked. He can't serve people brown

sauce on chips because no one's ever heard of that, that's insane and brown sauce is mad expensive. So what this chip shop owner did is he said right fuck it I have to give my customers something. He got his HP brown sauce and watered it down with a load of chip shop vinegar. And he invented Edinburgh chippy sauce, which is effectively HP sauce, brown sauce, watered down with vinegar, and then he served it on his chips

and his customers went apeshit for it. So then he said to the supplier in Glasgow, I'm after mixing brown sauce with vinegar andit for it. So then he said to the supplier in Glasgow, I'm after mixing brown sauce with vinegar and they love it. Can you make this for me now and sell it to me? And that's how Edinburgh Chippy Sauce was born. The Irish connection, that's my hot take. That's my hot take. I can't prove that, but I can prove that Italian chip shop culture did start in 1880 with that Giuseppe fellow who got on the wrong boat. So that's my story of being in Edinburgh thinking that I'd gone fully psychotic and then having the novelty and shock of Edinburgh chippy sauce fostering the type of

mindful interrogation that led me to understand that no, I wasn't going mad. My apartment was just a camera obscura. But thank you Edinburgh for setting out that fucking gig. I can't wait to come back in November and eat some chippy sauce. And do you know what? I'm not gonna, like I could go online now

and order Edinburgh chippy sauce to my house. I'm not doing it. Like I could go online now. And order Edinburgh Chippy Sauce to my house. I'm not doing it. I won't do it. And I'm not going to bring some back home. Like I said to you before about. That sparkling water that I like. That they have over in Spain. Vichy Catalan.

That bicarbonate sparkling water. In this world today. Where everything is instant. And you can have whatever you want whenever you want i want to maintain a little bit of cultural scarcity i want the splendor and wonder and joy of edinburgh chippy sauce i want that to stay in edinburgh and for me to only taste it whenever i visit edinburgh every couple of years. I want to keep it as that special little thing. Because when you do that, you give it such great meaning.

It has such great meaning then. 50% of what makes it so tasty is that I can't have it right now. And what makes it really beautiful is it's effectively HP sauce with a bit of vinegar but like I said that that's how HP sauce was invented. An English fella who'd been to India and tasted chutney once and just couldn't get the flavor out of his head. Couldn't get it out of his head and couldn't just hop on a ship back to India to taste it and it tormented him until someone had to make a strange approximation of it that's true cultural scarcity there that's the value and beauty of cultural scarcity i really miss i miss the fact that we no longer have cultural scarcity like the hp brown sauce got me thinking about its musical equivalent. The musical equivalent of HB Brown Sauce

is this French band called Cortex. And I'll tell you why. Cortex were kind of an obscure French jazz band from the early 1970s. They're now one of the most sampled bands in hip-hop music. Now, they were very well-trained jazz musicians and they were well-versed-hop music. Now they were very well trained jazz musicians and they were well versed in jazz music and they were from I think like a rural town in France. This is like 1973 and one

day the piano player from Cortex he goes to a local cafe. Now in the cafe the radio is playing and the radio is playing funk music. I think they were playing James Brown. Now this piano player, this jazz musician, French fella, he'd never heard funk music before or anything like it. So he's sitting down in the cafe going, oh my God, what is this on the radio? This is astounding.

This is incredible. I've never heard music like this before in my life. So he goes up to the person behind the counter what's that song what's that song on the radio person behind the counter goes I don't know he waits he waits he's hoping that the person on the radio announces what had just been played and then the music is over that's it gone and this jazz pianist this french jazz pianist was just i can't believe that i've just heard the most amazing music i've ever heard in my life i don't know who the artist is i don't even know what type of music it is this is after changing my life and i can never ever hear it

again because it's 1974 you can't shazam anything there's nothing you can do if you hear a song and and it's gone that's it it's fucking gone it's gone forever you don't know the name of it it's gone forever so this drove him fucking mad so he gets into his car and he drives to his bandmates and says i just heard the maddest music i have ever heard in my life in a cafe and we need to try and play it right now from my memory while it's still in my head and the lads are like are you sure fucking now get your drums get your bass

I'm gonna go on the piano and I'm gonna try and play from memory whatever the fuck it was I heard on the radio so he starts playing starts playing jazz says to the drummer no faster faster like that says to the bass player not like that not like that it's a bit snappier than that so they start grooving and then cortex creates this really really strange music this very odd sound that's not like anything else other than cortex and what it is is

a lot of incredibly accomplished jazz musicians trying their best to play funk music because one of them heard it once and they developed something completely new and completely unique based on one deeply enthusiastic and passionate memory as a result of cultural scarcity it's the brown sauce of music you know i'll play a tiny snippet of cortex rather than describe the music to you um because i've got to be careful of copyright strikes that's why i don't do music podcasts anymore but i'll play you a little bit of cortex and i'll pitch it down slightly i can't do it just just by describing it Absolutely phenomenal stuff there, guys. That's a French band called Cortex from the 1970s. If you're familiar with MF Doom, you'll know that

sample. Very influential on hip-hop. Don't forget to tune in after the break, because I'm going to be platforming a transphobe. Hehehehe Hehehehe Hehehehe But yeah, hehehehe

That's Cortex. French pan pan the musical equivalent of HB brown sauce used there a fair use copyright as part of a documentary a short snippet go and buy some of Cortex's

music that's from the 1971 that's from Cortex recorded like two or three albums they absolutely did not sell pressed a couple of hundred 1971 that's from. Cortex recorded like two or three albums. They absolutely did not sell. Pressed a couple of hundred copies of this very odd, strange, fast jazz music. And then in the 1990s, rappers and hip-hop producers, who were trying their best to find the rarest possible beats to sample,

in the 90s, one of them pulls out this weird little album from a French band, plays it and says, this is fucking amazing. What is this? It's not jazz, it's not funk, but it sounds like hip hop. And then they sample the fuck out of Cortex,

the HP brown sauce of music. All right, it's time for our little, our little ocarina pause. Have I got any books to bang off my head? What am I reading here? I've got a short story collection. It's Kevin Barry. Look, you can't go wrong with Kevin fucking Barry. Can't go wrong

with Kevin Barry. It's his first short story collection called There Are Little Kingdoms from 2007, which I believe is kind of hard to find but I've got a copy of it here. I need to invite Kevin back on this podcast. Kevin was a guest before. I need to invite him back on this podcast.

An astounding writer. I don't need to tell you about Kevin Barry. I'm going to hit myself into the head with his book and you're going to hear an advertisement for something. On April 5th And you're going to hear an advertisement for something. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey!

Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health,

to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca That's sunrisechallenge.ca Actually I'm going to hit my hand with this one

because this has got a little snap to it and it's actually quite sore. So that's my hand being hit by the book. That's interesting. Now I've hit myself into the head with some very heavy books this one is thin and elastic with a real paperback cover and that was not pleasant to slap myself into the head with but fantastic book there are little kingdoms by kevin barry support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast

if you get marth merriment distraction joy whatever the fuck you get from this podcast whatever has you listening to this podcast please consider becoming a patron because this podcast is my full-time job this is how i earn a living this. This is how I pay my bills. It's how I rent this office. It's how I get my equipment. It's how I have the time and space to deliver a podcast to each week that I can truly put 100% into. It's what gives me space for failure. And by space for failure, I mean I get to deliver to you the podcast that I want to deliver in my gut. To follow what I'm legitimately passionate about. Rather than delivering what I think ye want to hear. When I can do that.

I've got creative authenticity. Like have you any idea what it would be like. Seriously. For me to go to one of the radio stations. And say to them. I want to do a half hour episode about how diluted brown sauce convinced me

that I wasn't psychotic in Edinburgh can I do that the idea just doesn't have any pizzazz I can't see that working as radio could you do something about the ick everybody's getting the ick have you heard of the ick everybody something about the ick? Everybody's getting the ick. The ick. Have you heard of the ick? Everybody's

getting the ick. They're going on dates and they're getting the ick. Could you do a podcast about the ick? And we get it sponsored by a brown sauce company. That's what you're dealing with. That's what you're dealing with. I'm not joking you. That's what you're dealing with.

And not even radio. That's what you're dealing with I'm not joking you that's what you're dealing with and not even radio that's what you're dealing with if your podcast is beholden to advertisers it's that so because of patrons I'm in the very lucky position

to tell those people to go fuck themselves 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 you can listen for free you can listen afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on soundness and kindness.

Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. Okay, upcoming gigs. I spoke about my UK tour, right right so that uk tour is almost sold out edinburgh's gone london manchester liverpool coventry is what's left and i think tickets for that are fane.co.uk forward slash blind boy or go to my Instagram. This weekend I'm in Cork. Cork Opera House is part of the Cork Podcast Festival. That's got like 10 tickets left.

Is it this Saturday? I believe it's this Saturday. 10 tickets left. I've got a fucking class guest. I have an expert in Irish mythology and early medieval history and I cannot wait for that in Cork this weekend then next Monday I'm in Vicar Street I think that's sold out I think Vicar

Street next Monday is sold out have a look and the 18th of November I am in the waterfront Belfast and then if you can't get tickets for Vicar Street this week on the 19th of November I'm doing my

Irish book launch in Vicar Street which is a live podcast as well on the 19th of November and then for the laugh just for the laugh I'm probably missing it

I mean Monaghan's sold out for the laugh in 2024 in February I'm in the lime tree theater in limerick on the 2nd of february and then i'm gigging in oslo in norway on the 7th of february and i will sell tickets quicker in oslo than i will in limerick and i can understand i wouldn't go to see me in limerick i don't like I can't understand

why would a Limerick person want to come to Limerick to listen to a Limerick person I feel like in Limerick I should just be walking around the streets talking to people instead instead of saying to everybody in Limerick come to a building and listen to me talk

just feels weird doing a live podcast in my own city what am I going to do talk about the bard shit the bard shit in bedford row and start a riot so for the second part of the podcast you keep asking me to do something about the history of door handles because a few months back i did mention that i was just thinking loads about door handles and the history of door handles. And I have been.

And it's not... I'm not particularly into door handles like the objects. I don't find the contraption of a door handle particularly fascinating in any way. What I am... I have a thread of curiosity around the history and philosophy of door handles mainly like

here's these things that are on doors and we touch them every single day and we don't think about them they're so important but we ignore them we take them for granted so I have been thinking about door handles and what's been emerging for me is

a correlation between the history of door handles and the domestication of the cat. So to first understand a door handle you have to start with a door and when did humans start needing doors and to get a grasp of that you'd want to start with the Neolithic revolution. I'm talking about 12,000 years ago, just after the last ice age. During the ice age, let's say 25,000 years ago, the earth was very different. It was glaciated. It was freezing. And humans, literally like you and I, humans, homo sapien sapien, existed 24,000 years ago during the Ice Age. Humans were hunter-gatherers and there was maybe only about one million humans on Earth. They followed hordes of animals and hunted them or moved from area to area to gather food that grew wild. These people had no need for doors. A lot of them lived in caves.

But then 12,000 years ago, after the Ice Age, something called the Neolithic Revolution happened. This was an explosion of technology. It happened in a few different populations of humans in different parts of the world around the same time. But I'm going to focus on the Fertile Crescent. I'm talking modern day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, you could include Egypt in that, areas around the Tigris and the Euphrates river. This was the fertile crescent 12,000 years ago. Humans there suddenly shifted away from hunting and gathering. They settled down and they started to learn how to domesticate plants and animals. They grew crops. They herded goats and sheep. They tilled the land. People weren't concerned

anymore with where is my next meal coming from, do I have to consistently and continually be on the move? All of a sudden now people could like settle down and stay and they had a bunch of free time on their hands and their needs for food and shelter were met. Creativity flourished. So you had pottery, new stone tools, growing crops and weaving them, creating fabrics. Sophisticated religious practices emerged. Burials became more complex. The groundwork for what we'd call civilization 12,000 years ago. Villages and towns emerged. And within villages and towns you've got little houses but what does a door do? A door secures that house and with the

rise of agriculture humans now had surplus. They had too much, they had more than what they needed and with surplus comes the need to protect what you have because see some people were living in towns and villages. And then other humans were living as hunter gatherers. So now if you had stuff like food. You had too much of it. Someone might want to come and rob it. So doors and door handles become quite an important part of civilization.

The first ever lock on a door is 5,000 years ago in Egypt. So if someone is locking their door then that means they're trying to keep another person out because that other person wants whatever is inside that house. So that's where door handles come from. They're a product of the Neolithic revolution. But what's interesting is at the same time that door handles get invented is also the exact same time that door handles get invented, is also the exact same time that cats became domesticated. You see, dogs have been domesticated like 30, maybe 50,000 years ago. Actually dogs aren't even real.

50,000 years ago, even going back farther, wolves used to follow humans when humans hunted. And during the Ice Age, and wolves would go, those people over there who are hunting the deer, maybe we should give them a hand. Let's help them out. They might give us some food. So very friendly wolves started hanging about with humans.

And those very, very friendly wolves eventually became dogs, an animal that doesn't exist in the wild. But cats, cats are different. Like if you look at a wolf, a wolf is very very different to a pug. But if you look at the descendants of domesticated cats, like the African wild cat which is still there today, they just look like domesticated cats that just live in the wild. When humans were hunter-gatherers, cats didn't give a fuck about us. They didn't care. They kept away from us.

But when humans, around the time of the Neolithic Revolution, started to live in towns and villages, that's when cats started becoming interested in humans. Now humans chose to domesticate wolves and turn them into dogs. Humans did that deliberately. Cats chose to be domesticated by us. Cats don't take instruction. You can't train a cat to do anything. A cat will do whatever the fuck it wants. But wild cats, the ancestors of domestic cats, they're not like lions. They don't hang around around in packs they're completely solitary animals who are

very territorial so sometime around the neolithic revolution they reckon 10 000 years ago because they found someone buried in cyprus 10 000 years ago who was buried with their cat but the compromise that wild cats made is that they became kind of comfortable being in groups of other cats if it meant being near humans but cats started to live alongside humans at the same time and for the same reason that we needed door handles and that reason is surplus when humans settled in villages all of a sudden humans weren't moving they had too much food so humans were storing food and grain in particular in silos. We had a lot of rubbish. So what did this do?

It brought rats and mice. Then the wild cats understood. Listen, I know we're wild cats and we're territorial. But these humans over there, if we just get along with each other and there's a bunch of cats hanging around, hang around these humans and there's guaranteed mice all the time. Don't have to do shit. Mice and rats all the time.

We just got to get along with each other. But scientists in 2007, they did a DNA test on domesticated cats to try and trace their wild ancestors. What's the wolf equivalent of the domestic cat? So they found multiple, we'll say heritage wild species of cat. And these cats look the same as domestic cats. There was an African wild cat, one in Asia, one in Europe, and then one in the Middle East. And the one in the Middle East was called F.S. Libica.

And they found that with today's domestic cats, most of them trace their genetics to this Middle Eastern wild cat and The answer that the scientists come up with was you know, why did this one wild cat from the Middle East? Why is that the one that was comfortable living with humans? The answer they come up with was cats are our arseholes the answer they come up with was cats are arseholes cats are arseholes and these other wild cats the one from africa the one from europe and the one from asia they just were like fuck off you're not rubbing me get i'm gonna eat your mice get the fuck away you're not rubbing me but there's one cat from the middle east this wild cat was like okay go on and that's where domestic cats traced their route. The Fertile Crescent, the Neolithic Revolution and specific group of wild cats from the Middle East

who had a tolerance for humans physically touching them and they're the ones who were like came into people's houses and stuff. So that's my thread of curiosity about the history of door handles. to people's houses and stuff. So that's my thread of curiosity about the history of door handles. I'm not particularly interested in door handles themselves but I do enjoy that cats and door handles came about at the same time for the same reason. And also if you've got a dog and a cat at home who's more likely to open the door handle? Like if you put a dog in front of a door and the dog wants to get out, the dog will stand there or sit there and bark and bark until you open the door for it. A cat will learn how to open the door, a cat will jump up and manipulate the door handle with its fucking paw.

And I'm excited by the correlation between those two things. Alright that's all I have time for this week. I'll catch you next week. I don't know what with. In the meantime, open the door for a dog, wink at a swan, and rub a cat.

You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece. Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca.