Had all your cube shaped Romans, welcome to The Blind by podcast. Let's begin this week's podcast with a little poem, a poem that was sent into us by Louis Tomlinson, formerly of One Direction, the poem is called I Tilted My Head. One day, five years ago, I noticed a smell and the color of my shirt, so I tilted my head to sniff the collar. I won't bore you by telling you what happened, but I will give you instructions on what you should do if you notice a smell on the color of your shirt.

Tilt your head to one side, snort your collar, inhale deeply, and don't stop until the color of your shirt is taut with your nostrils. Keep sucking in, inhale your shirt in its entirety. This may take up to seven hours. You are now wearing your shirt inside your chest. Thank you very much, Louis Tomlinson, for that poem. I tilted my head. Thank you very much. It a pleasure to read out on top are doing well, I hope you're doing well.

So what's the crack? How are you, everyone? Welcome to this podcast, if you're if you're a first time listener, go back to some of your episodes, swim around in the podcast. Swim around in it. That's what I'd say, treat the. Treat the back catalogue as a Dell are a broke, you know, and you can't swim in a broken you. I saw a broken baby's not a leg because it's not treat the podcast like a fuckin a clean pond, a manmade pond and swim around a.

. Right. By which I mean, listen to some earlier episodes, please. If you're a regular listener, what's the crack? Are you get on. I got shit sleep last night because just as I was drifting off to sleep, I learned a bizarre a bizarre fact. Right. So in 1956. When they were having the Olympics in Australia and. So, you know you know, when you have the Olympics in a country, they do this, this ritual where the Olympic torch.

Which is like just the Taj that's on fire. I think they light it in fucking grease or something, and it's literally carried to the host country. For the opening ceremony, so in in Sydney in 1956. They somehow somehow I don't know how it happened. They got confused with the Olympic torch, right? So what they thought was the actual official Olympic torch turned out not to be the Olympic torch at all. So some land was running with this flame and torch.

Thousands of people lined the streets of Sydney, cheering him on. There was a police escort, just this lad running with the fucking Olympic torch. He gets to the opening ceremony, hands the torch to the mayor. And it turns out it's not the Olympic torch at all. It was a set of flame and underpants on a stick. So that happened 1956, the Australian Olympics there temporarily mixed up the official Olympic torch with a set of flaming underpants on a stick soaked in kerosene.

So I'm not sleeping after hearing that hard that last night, but 12 o'clock, ready to go to bed, and then I stumble across that fact on the Internet and I said, well, fuck that, I'm not sleeping. I'm not sleeping. After hearing that because of the just the logistics of it, how the fuck does that happen? And I couldn't find enough information about how that happened. Was it a prank, you know, was a deliberate.

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

And I just felt that if I had a flight, the Bangkok airport, because I was sick this time last year, that quarantined me. So I cancelled Thailand. But I miss Australia. I miss the little things I take for granted. And I do know what I want to know, what I want. If I'm thinking of everything that's been taken away from me. Now, with this pandemic, I can't even go to the gym, you know what I mean?

And I'm locked inside. And it's been like this for a year. And I'm coping. I'm dealing with it. But the little things that I take, the simple things like what I crave right now, more than anything, if I had a vision of what what could I do right now in a in a pandemic free world, I would like it to be six in the morning in Sydney. And I would like to. We're on an empty stomach run, bare chested through the Sydney Botanical Gardens as the sun comes up.

Running through there with the morning Joe and the mist, the mist in the air, the smell of fucking arcades and palm trees stepping over lizards saying hello to Gekko's. Nobody around and the sun coming up and Sydney Harbour and doing that for a solid hour like 10 kilometres, and then once that's done back to my hotel, have a shower and then go for a lovely, chilled out fucking breakfast that I've earned because I just did a 10 kilometre run and I'm starving.

And no salt, no fear of social distance, not no fear of human beings. Standing close to people in the queue. And I suppose in a way, I'm kind of in a way, I kind of have to be thankful of coronavirus for that. There's there's a way of living asceticism, I've spoken about it before where it's kind of associated with Buddhism when you deny your body pleasures. And I've I've been denied all of us have been denied so many freedoms because of coronavirus.

That I have to say to myself, isn't it lovely, isn't it nice that the thing I crave the most is not like material things, it's not great riches. I just want the humble simplicity of a run in a place that I consider to be beautiful. And that's genuinely what I want to do the most. So I'm kind of thankful for that. I'm thankful for that. I fucking never take anything like that for granted again, you know what I mean?

I'm so I am that's a positive. That is a positive that's we've all done a year of asceticism. We've all done a year of like within. Most major religions kind of have it, you know, I'm not against religion, I'm I'm against I don't like when religious people take roles from the religion and try and use that to control other people's lives. But that's a minority religion for most people. It's just it's a way for but it's a way for some people to get a sense of meaning in life and to live with a sense of direction and purpose.

And I have no problem with that. And a lot of the major religions there include some degree of asceticism. You know, Christianity has lent and Islam has Ramadan. I mean, it's basically like take a lot of shit you enjoy out of your life so you don't take it for granted. And you can experience some spiritually, again, denying yourself. Material things, pleasures of the senses and denying yourself these things so that your desires and needs become much more humble and existential, like what I'm craving.

There is a spiritual experience. Running through botanical gardens for me is it's a spiritual communion with nature and my sense of self. And I knew it when I was doing it. I knew it when I was doing it. You can't pay for this. You can't buy it. It's a pure here and now. Spiritual. Existential experience that I guess when I was running through the Botanical Gardens and when I'm on my deathbed, it's one of those things that come into my mind when I'm dying.

That would be one of the things, the flashes before my eyes, when I'm thinking about my life. And I know it well because I felt that when I was doing it, I'm like, this is peak living, whatever the fuck life is.

This is it right here, running bare chest to the Sydney Botanical Gardens. So thank you coronavirus for that, you fucking prick. You bastard. So what am I going to talk about for this week's podcast? And what I wanted to do was answer a few questions, wants to answer a few of your questions, but so here's something I've been noticing. Here's something I've been noticing. Over the past year, probably because of the pandemic. The Irish podcast in space has become it's changed as in the way more people in Ireland are listening to podcasts.

And it's become more mainstream, the audience for podcast podcasts has become more mainstream in Ireland over the past year. And what do I mean by that? People who used to listen to the radio. Now, listen to podcasts, when I started this podcast, now I was late to the game, I started this podcast in late 2017 and 2018 and I was quite late to the game because there's been Irish podcasts like Irish History podcast. I've been listening to that since about 2011 and I got involved in twenty eighteen.

But when I got involved in podcasts, it was still quite a niche space. There wasn't really any big Irish podcasts. And what attracted me to the podcast in space was our creative freedom, a creative freedom that didn't exist in mainstream spaces like radio or television, the music industry, which I've been working for 10 years. So podcasting was like my kind of opinion was with podcasting. So with mainstream entertainment, it's people who want to be spoon fed their entertainment.

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

If someone is listening to your podcast, they've made a choice to do this. They know what they want and this person isn't being spoon fed. This is someone who is common directly to the source and saying, I'm here to consume the art that you are making. So for me, that's what I did, because I'm like class, because this is what I want to make and I don't want to compromise. And you're sitting down here listening to it.

This is what you want. Let's go. I fucking love it. You can't do that in mainstream spaces and podcasting. And Ireland was like that for a while. But then the past year now it's become it's become a lot more mainstream. I remember like I remember Jesus lads, even in early twenty nineteen I'd post on Facebook, check out this week's podcast. I'd get a lot of comments from people going, what's a podcast. So podcasting has become a lot more mainstream.

People who would have been listening to today, a farm to a farm, listening to whatever the fuck the deejays are talking about now they're going I'm going to check out the Irish podcast charts. And a lot of them have come to my podcast and they like it and they listen more than welcome. But some of them are just like your boring the stuff you talk about a shit and that's fine. It's like grand. Go back to the radio. So this isn't for you.

I'm not going to change it. But a lot of the requests that I'm getting from my podcast. I'm getting a lot of people specifically asking me to talk about. Chicken, Philip, it rolls. Teenage discos. And links Africa. And these three things keep popping up, I'm like, hold a fork. Who are these people that are like I listen to that podcast you did last week about performance art and it was good. But could you talk about teenage discourse?

Ah, I liked that podcast he did last week about the history of Christ's foreskin. But can you talk more about Chicken Filiatrault? And more and more of these requests were coming in. And I was kind of resisting them, I was resisting them and going, because, look, chicken, it rolls links Africa teenage discuss these topics. These are these are hugely discussed topics within mainstream discourse, if you want to hear someone talking about Chicken Federal's, you'll hear it on the fucking radio, you'll hear it on TV.

These are these are these are well spoken about topics.

We don't necessarily need more people talking about these things. And I was I was resistance. Right, it's a bit like. When you if I hear a new artist and I absolutely hate this, it means I secretly like it and I'm just not ready to admit it yet. So all these people were asking me, speak about Chicken Federal's, speak about teenage discos, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, not doing that. That's not what my podcast is about.

I am I'm making podcasts to get the fuck away from that territory because that's like someone saying to me, play hard. That's right. That's what that's like. I'm trying to get the fuck away from that so I can have it. So I can so I can. I want to do podcasts about the stuff we don't talk about, the stuff we don't think about. I want to find the hot topics. I want to read between the lines.

So. I don't want to do podcasts about she can fill it roles, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And then I started saying to myself, am I being an elitist hipster cunt? By refusing to acknowledge chicken, it roles links Africa. Am I being an elitist hipster cunt? And I'm like, you know what? You are blind by your being an elitist hipster cunt. So I'm going to talk about fucking chicken Filiatrault this week.

I'm going to talk about chicken feed, it rolls, and if we have time, I'm going to talk about links, Africa and teenage discourse. You know, I think this is going to be a bit of a long take. So let's get the ocarina out of the way right now.

OK, here is the ocarina. The sky sale is now on, and who doesn't need a pick me up at this time of year? So get award winning Sky TV and our best ever Wi-Fi with ultra fast broadband together from just 50 euros a month for 12 months. Well, that's nice. That's a feel good saving from us. So save big on the sky sale search sky 50 today, new Sky customers only availability subject to location, minimum term and further terms.

Apply for more info. See Skydeck reports lesbian's. People of Dublin, are you a Dublin dipper or a Lukan licker, or are you Dublin's leading expert this year, Cadbury Creme Egg is 50 years old and celebrating its golden jubilee. So what we want to know is how will you be celebrating the hunt for the special Golden Jubilee Egg is on, unwrap it and win up to five thousand euro. For more information, check out Carbury Ireland across all social at the entertainment weekend.

That was an ocarina you probably heard an advert for something in there, I know what it was about. Support from this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patriae on page Patreon dot com forward slash the Blind by podcast. This is a 100 percent fully independent podcast.

All right. It's it's independent. So I can have full creative control. I'm beholden to nobody. I'm beholden to no advertiser. This is my full time job. It's how I earn a living. I fucking love it. I love every minute of it. I love making the podcast. I love delivering it. If you're a regular, listen to the podcast. If you're enjoying this and I'm providing you with some entertainment or solace in your day, just consider paying me for the work that I'm doing.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. Patreon on dot com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you can't afford that, don't worry, you can listen for free. But if you can afford it, you're paying for somebody who can't afford it. So everybody gets a podcast and I earn a living. What more can I want? And I don't have to fucking get on to art and make documentaries about chicken.

Philip Roth instead. I can do it here on my podcast. All right, follow me on Twitter, Twitter that I like to blame by podcast I'm on every Thursday night and have an MacCracken come and chat to me. So let's get let's get hot. Let's let's get hot with some hot chicken rolls because I've got some blistering takes. So let's talk chicken, Philip. Why does a chicken fill it role if you're Irish living in Ireland, you know exactly what a chicken federalised if you're not from Ireland.

I'm going to have to explain. It's. It'd be something which would be considered a recent national dish of Ireland, it's it's not just a piece of food, it's a piece of food that when you mention it, it causes debate. So it has this. Quite simply, it's a French baguette. It's a fried fried chicken fried breaded chicken breast, which can be plain or spicy. Then maybe some lettuce, but are mayonnaise not even saying that, even just saying that in in a group of Irish people immediately starts a debate because everybody the thing what a chicken fellate role is, it can be whatever you want it to be.

I've just given a standard. Here's what it definitely has. It's French burgers, Krusty. And breaded chicken, which is either plain or spicy. Those are the two definite ingredients. After that, it comes down to personal tastes. You know, I even tweeted when I tweeted, this is what I consider to be a basic chicken roll and it's got shit tons of quote tweets of people going, no, I put onions in it, I put ketchup in.

All other people put lettuce in it. Some people don't want mayonnaise. Instead, they want brown sauce. So it's it's what could be considered currently a national snack or dish of Ireland, which not only is a is a tasty foodstuff that you won't find someone who doesn't like chicken. Philip rolls like there's even vegan chicken Philip roads. But you can only get up in Dublin, but like. It's like it's it's not just an important foodstuff and lunch item will say it's it's a mean it's a meme it carries with it has cultural value to it.

And this is why to speak about the chicken feed, it is a cliche.

Chances are if you're listening, if you're an Irish person listening to my podcast, you're trying to get away from listening to people talking about Chicken Filiatrault because everyone is talking about chicken. Philip it like an Irish Tic-Tac Chicken Federal's are the biggest cliche chicken fellate roles in the song. Come out you black in pants. Those are the two things that Irish Tic-Tac that are just the most basic cliche. But how can I, as someone who's interested in culture, I can't turn away from a chicken federal.

I eat chicken federal's. I like them. They're delicious. They're fantastic. My personal chicken Filiatrault very basic. What is this? Spicy chicken, bread, mayonnaise, grated cheese. That's all I want. Maybe lettuce, maybe sometimes I don't trust deli lettuce. It can be a harbinger of bacteria, especially in the summer, but. How can I not inquire and ask and give significance and importance to a sandwich that not just exists as a sandwich but is a crucial part of of Irish identity in 2020?

So I now have to ask questions about. What is it about the chicken Phillip role and that that it carries such cultural significance that it's so Moema fight? What is it about it and why is it so special?

And why does it say about our current Irish identity that a fucking chicken sandwich is such a huge topic that you can bring up and discuss almost almost up there with pints? You know, you can talk about pints, lovely, big, creamy pints people will speak about. She can fit it roles in the same way that they'll speak about pints. So you have to begin by acknowledging that Ireland really doesn't have a food culture. We don't have a historical food culture.

OK, you're going to have the odd regional dishes up in Dublin. You've got Canada, which is like boiled sausages, limerick. We've got packet and tripe. Cark, they've got Rashin, boss. These are these are foods that you eat when you call around your grandmother, you know, people really en masse, the people of Cork and Limerick in Dublin aren't consuming these foods every single day. They're like heritage foods that we pretend to eat all the time.

But we don't. Now, compare that with Spain or Italy, where average everyday people are truly engage in in in their fucking culture. Food is part of their culture. It's it's part of their identity and culture. And they have many, many different ingredients and items and foodstuffs. We don't have that in Ireland. All right. We simply fucking don't. Not when you compare it to other countries and cultures. We simply don't. So why don't we have a food culture?

You can't overstate the famine, right? You can't overstate the famine and British rule. The Irish potato famine. Of the eighteen forties, right? The British forces that colonized and controlled Ireland exported all our wheat and barley and carrots and vegetables and meet export demand for profit because they were colonizing Ireland and stripping us of our resources and the poor people of Ireland because they didn't have money to access to have access to any food, subsided exclusively on potatoes for quite a long time.

And this was actually fine because potatoes are an entire foodstuff. The people of Ireland before the famine were actually really healthy people because you can live on just potatoes and get all your nutrients from it. So for about 150 years, Irish people were just eaten potatoes and buttermilk. And it wasn't I'm sure it wasn't nice. There wasn't a lot of variety, but people were healthy. But if that's how a vast majority of the population behave and exclusively eaten just potatoes, then you're going to lose folk knowledge.

You're going to lose recipes in the same way that you lose access to the ingredients of those recipes. Also, as well, you have to remember things like the penal laws where for the average Irish peasant, you're not getting access to education or the ability to write and keep recipes. So I'm sure a lot of shit got lost. Now, another thing that's important with why don't those in Ireland have a food culture historically?

And I asked I asked an expert about this before because I used to think it was just the famine. It wasn't. Because historically, we've always had ready access to fresh ingredients. Now, I'm not talking about the British getting rid of carrots and exporting wheat and barley, even before that, we as a country had consistent access to fresh ingredients, fertile soil. You can grow your wheat, you can grow your barley. When you have fresh ingredients are fresh meat.

You don't need to preserve it. So it's like the likes of Spain and Italy. Preservation of food because of the weather was a much larger part of how the as so of preservation of food to keep it from going off is part of that culture. Then you're going to have a lot more pickling. You're going to have salt and you're going to have drying. You're going to have all these things. We never actually needed that because we could eat fresh food and fresh food is really tasty and really nice.

So when you have loads of fresh food, you just eat the fresh food and you don't overprepare it, create a lot of recipes. So that's another reason that Ireland doesn't have a food culture. We most definitely have a drink culture. We have an alcohol culture where.

You know, where in in Spain or Italy, people get together and socialize around food, we don't do that. We get together and socialize around alcohol. And is that healthy or unhealthy? It can be healthy when you're having the crack. Ultimately, I would view it as unhealthy. I would again, I'm going to I'm painting I'm painting it on 800 years of being colonized by the Brits. I know some people listen to me go, always blaming the Brits, always blaming the Brits lads, they control the country for fucking 800 years in a not very nice way.

So you kind of have to. And our drink culture. I would definitely view it as as a a product of collective trauma, collective trauma of of being colonized for 800 years, you're going to get a drink cultural. Right. So where do chicken fit? It rolls come from. Well, you have to look, I view Chicken Filiatrault in the context of Ireland becoming a member of the European Union. So Ireland became a member of the EU in 1972.

And the thing is, as Irish people like 1972 were really trying to figure out who we are as people because.

In 72 were basically the 26 counties of Ireland to have independence from Britain, 50 years only, and we're also living in essentially a theocracy. We didn't know who we were. It's like, well, the Brits ruled us for that amount of time. Now they're gone. Fuck, who are we? What are we going to do? Let's let's just let the church rule there for a while and we become mad Catholics. Right? That's what we're going to do with the Saints and scholars.

And Ireland pre EU was kind of economically isolated, like the founders of the Irish Free State, the likes of Aimin Devil Aira Devil era really embarked on on a vision of Ireland being quite isolated. And he viewed foreign products, especially anything from Britain, but he viewed most foreign influence in Ireland as a type of corruption. So Ireland was quite isolated. So then when in 1972, all of a sudden we are European? No, we're in the EU.

But the problem is, is that we don't feel European like we're in the EU. We don't feel European like it's something we've had to hammer into ourselves. Certainly in 1972, no one felt European like. We're on the far edge of, I think, of Europe as the continent, I don't even look at the Brits now. I know the Brits did Brexit, but I don't look at the Brits as European. The Brits are the Brits and Europe is that that's France, Spain, Germany, Italy, that's Europe.

But Ireland, it's like nowhere. Ireland, where over here we were Britain. And now we're trying to figure out what the fuck we are. But we're not European. But in 1972, we joined the EU and we now have to think about our identity. We have to think of ourselves as Europeans, which is quite difficult. And and as well, we we think we traditionally think of Europeans as being quite classy and posh, even when it isn't like there's footage on The Late Late Show from about 1989 or 1990 where there's this fella on it saying, I believe that in 10 years time, no, I don't think it's the 90s thing with the 80s.

This fella says, I believe in ten years time that the average Irish person will buy a bottle of wine the way that we consume Guinness. And everyone in the audience laughed. The idea that Irish people would drink wine because we saw wine as that's really posh, expensive stuff for French people and Italians. That's not for us. Even though in France, in Italy, wine isn't posh. Ah, in Spain it's what regular working class people drink. Similarly, you think of cheeses are you think of Spanish fucking paella are treats or cured meats.

And we as Irish people are thinking this is fucking fancy posh shit, this isn't for us. But you go to Spain, you go to Italy. No, it's not. This is what regular working class people are eating. They don't consider it as posh at all because they have a well-established full food culture. So we have this major identity crisis. What we just where we know are in the EU, but we certainly do not see ourselves as European.

And I think we view European things as being bougie, as being better than us. Like I still struggle with that now, like even when I'm in fucking Spain, you know, and I sit and eat and what people and I almost feel like my comfort zone is like. I feel like this this shit covered pig who swails and fermented barley water in the gutter and it's just like you eat your paella and your bread and your cured meats and your wine yetto that there.

I'm just going to I'm just going to crawl around the gutter here with beer. I might write a poem about it, but I'm not good enough for what you're doing and it's ridiculous. It's this fucking ridiculous thing that I have from childhood. What I view Europeanists as being posh and fancy, even though it actually isn't because they're just regular people. So there was a long journey for Irish people to start becoming comfortable with feeling. I don't think the problem is it's it's identifying as European, but also identifying as being good enough, identifying as being on equal footing and is valuable and is cultured.

As the people of Italy and Spain and France, you know what I mean, always having that issue of we're not good enough and. The thing with the EU, what the EU means. Like, I can I can go to fucking any shop now, I can go into stores and I can buy a chunk of French bread for one euro. Which is insane. That's what the EU is, you can make cheese in France and you can sell it in Limerick at the same price that you set it in France, because it's a common area economically.

But it was a long road getting Irish people to accept that. And I vaguely remember some of it from my childhood because I was born in the 80s. So I remember, you know, my childhood in the early in the early 90s. Certain foods common on the TV and like spaghetti, bananas, like no fox spaghetti pizza, let's pizza. Pizza wasn't a thing in, so I'm a child, I'm watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's nineteen ninety one.

Why are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles eaten? They're eating fucking pizza. I'm going, what the fuck is pizza? What's this? And there's no Internet. My mom doesn't know where it is, my dad doesn't know what pizza is, my brothers don't know what pizza is. It's this exotic food and this is the early 90s. And then. On the telly are on the same time as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you start to see adverts for like Goodfellas Pizza, you know what I mean?

And now they did. I tell you what we did have. I tell you what we did before we could buy pizzas in Ireland. There was French bread pizza. That was the first thing that came in, which wasn't pizza. It was like half a French Breguet with tomato sauce on it. And people could buy those. And amazing pizzas weren't a thing. I'm sure they existed at the time. They just weren't part of Irish discourse. So in the early 90s, around the same time as the turtles, someone decides Ireland's ready for pizza.

And on the television now, you've got adverts for Goodfellas Pizza. And that was the first time I saw what a pizza could be on these Goodfellas pizza adverts. Right. And I don't remember what party it was. I was quite young. And I just said to my mother, because there's no fucking way like we were not getting pizzas, like, here's the thing like. Adverts for pizzas on the TV in my house growing up, that would have been seen as just, oh no, no, no, that's not for us, that's far too fancy because pizzas were probably about four pounds, which would have been really expensive.

So you didn't even talk about the pizza on the telly. It's like that's not for us. That's for people up in Dublin, is what my man, my dad would have said. So eventually my birthday comes around. I'm obsessed with the turtles. I'm like, I need to fucking eat a pizza. So I say to my mama, please, will you get me a pizza for my fucking birthday? So she caves in and she goes to Donz by the Goodfellas Pizza, complains about how expensive it is, brings the pizza home.

It's my fucking birthday. And then she looks she doesn't know what pizza is. I don't really know what a pizza is. I'm a child. All I can think about is eating it. So she looks at the back of the pizza box and then it says, you've got to turn on the fucking oven for it. I don't remember her going apeshit going. We are not putting on an oven for a fucking pizza because this is another thing. What Irish fucking food culture?

The idea or concept that you would put an overnight for a meal for a pizza to my mother was fucking absurd because ovens were these incredibly expensive, extravagant things and an oven went on once a fucking week if there was a roast and that was it. And how my ma used to do the oven and she still does it. I LED's. Sometimes I go outside the door of my house and on top of my bin is a bag of scones, rice, and then I have to ring my mat and I have to go my way.

The fuck did you leave scones? And that is happening now. Man why did you leave scones? And my Ben what the fuck is that? And she said to me, I had to put the oven on for a meal. So I filled the oven with scones and I have excess and now they're on your bin. These are the scones that, if you remember me, my interview with Spike Lee from two years ago, my man who thought he was Bruce Lee, give me a bag of scones before I got in the airplane.

They were in excess of ensconce. So the concept and idea of putting on an oven from my mother is so excessive that if the oven goes on, she must make several baked goods also so that she's getting the most out of the oven. So if there's a chicken in the oven, in the middle shelf above that is is an apple tart and below that is scones. Just because the fucking oven is on and I'm not wasting any heat. So when I was a kid, the pizza comes into the house, the Goodfellas Pizza, Frozen pizza.

She reads the back and she goes for, I know it's your birthday. They often is not going on. We are not put in the fucking oven. So she fried the fucking pizza. She fucking fried the pizza in a frying pan and fed me the square mosh. And I don't know the difference. I don't know the difference because I'm a child and I'm eight. And what I've been told is a pizza. OK, this is the nineties.

Let's hear this this sound. I sound like a nineteen year old man who was remembering rationing in Britain. And I'm like, no, this is the 90s. Nirvana were in the charts. Let's now people were listening to Nirvana and we didn't know what a pizza was in Ireland. Similarly, Donio like spaghetti bawdiness. Fuck me, and then the biggest trigger of all. Romantical. So there was this fucking desert man called Romantical, which is like a frozen ice cream cake, and it started to appear on the TV in the early 90s.

And again, this would come on the TV and I my man, would nearly turn off the channel because it was romantic. It was an ice cream cake that would cost 10 pounds. It was in I don't know. I don't remember exactly. It was in the region between eight and 10 pounds. It was insanely extravagant. Right. So I never even asked for a Mantega we would have gotten. The step down from romantical was Viennetta, there would have been a Viennetta may be very special occasions like Christmas, Viennetta was half the price of romantic, but again, romantic.

That's for Dublin. People don't don't even think about the romantic and what we used to have instead. Like if you even thought about romantic, a grown up. I didn't get romantic. Like Irish mothers have this way of doing things where you ask for the nice thing, they get angry with you and instead they give you the homemade alternative as this act of culinary aggression. So if I asked for romantic because I'm looking at the adverts going, this looks amazing.

If I asked for a Mantega, I got this really strange Irish dessert. Right.

It used to be ice cream, plain vanilla ice cream that came in a one liter. How would I describe as plain vanilla ice cream in a long, thin block that's encased in cardboard? Right, so the most plainest, cheapest ice cream, that was probably good because we have access to dairy, so it was probably good dairy ice cream, but it was plain vanilla ice cream.

And what I would get on a Sunday only was if I dare to ask for a mantega. She would get this long block of ice cream, get a bread knife, cut off a wedge of ice cream through the cardboard, and then place the ice cream between the these fucking wafers, these really bland beige wafers that had a hint of sweetness and you'd get. A little wedge of ice cream between these two wafers and you bite into it and it always be little bits of cardboard from from where the ice cream was caught out of the tube dissolved.

I can't disassociate the taste of cardboard and pecan cardboard out of my mouth. And it was between these two wafers. And this was the Irish dessert that you only got on a Sunday. Now I'm convinced about this food. This fucking ridiculous Irish dessert was actually this was a satire on communion wafers and Irish people didn't know they were doing it. So everybody knows this Irish dessert. It's the vanilla ice cream wedge, cut out cardboard in it between these two ridiculous beige wafers.

Those beige wafers tasted like a slightly sweeter version of communion wafers. And I think it was Irish resistent culinary satire. Don't think Irish people know they were doing it. But if you only have this on a Sunday and in the morning, you go to mass and you have your communion wafer and then later on you have dessert, which tastes a little bit like communion wafer, but sweeter. There's there's a culinary satire in there that we weren't aware of that we were doing, but that was the payoff with that dessert.

So that's the dessert you get if you ask for a fork and romantical. So the food culture I grew up with was one steeped in in in shame and desire. And and it's the thing is, too, I wasn't like I'm not describing a childhood of poverty.

I'm not saying that like like it wasn't like we were too poor to afford romantical. There wasn't a hell of a lot of money. I had to work. And parents, they could have gotten the romantic if they wanted to. But it wasn't about that. It was the principle. Like, I'm sure my Mac or put the oven on more than once a week, it wasn't about that. It was the principle of excess and extravagance, the extravagance of puttin on the oven, the extravagance of a fucking ice cream for a tenner, the extravagance of it.

It's it's a generational trauma that exists in a country that had a fucking famine where two million people died. And it wasn't it wasn't really that long ago. My great grandmother was in the famine, you know what I mean? So we're going to carry on certain attitudes and beliefs and strange rules about food from that and what is extravagance and what is appropriate. And all of this another tenet of food culture is do you sit around a table and eat together?

I didn't have that grown up. We didn't do that. And if you did at Christmas, maybe. But if we were if my family were sitting around a table eating dinner, it meant someone was in trouble or there was some important information. It's like, why the fuck? Why the fuck are we all sitting around the table?

This is weird. So we didn't eat at the table.

We you got your food on a plate and you put it on your lap and you sat on a chair and you ate it like that. He's sitting around tables with Christmas, are going to a fucking restaurant, which would happen once every two fucking years with extreme anxiety and people who sat around tables, that was good room shit. That's really posh. Posh people sit around tables. So you have a country that in the fucking 90s, up until the mid 90s, has a non-existent food culture.

So then what happens in nineteen eighty nine at a company sets itself up called Cuisine de France, which is not a French company. It's an Irish company from Dublin who started off selling like French bread, French rolls. But they weren't freshly cooked. They were half cooked. So they would sell halfcocked rolls to petrol stations. Right. Petrol stations and shops. And then what would happen is that the shop are the petrol station would have an oven and then they would finish the cooking of the French bread in the shop.

And people in Ireland could go to the shop and buy a big, long piece of French bread. And this was the biggest, fanciest shit imaginable. And it blew our brains. Right. How long sticks of French bread? Oh, la, la. And it's from this is well remember I said the French bread pizza. That was the fanciest shit you could get was a French bread pizza, which was just a bit of a French progress cut in half with some ketchup on it and cheese in the microwave and fucking Provence.

Poor cuisine. The French basically. What they were trying to do was to introduce a more European concept of food to Irish people, that was cuisine de France, like the world cuisine, wow cuisine. It's French for food. How posh, right? They started off with rolls and a big turning point. And this would have been circa nineteen ninety five. And this is what I think. Now you have to remember what's happening to in 1995.

We don't have a food culture. But we do have this ridiculously strong economy called the Celtic Tiger, we were in the middle of an economic boom. So by 1995, what was 1995 for me, 1995, I made my confirmation would have been made. So I had a few pence in my pocket. I remember buying an ice cream called Salguero. And not feeling shame. And my man not given out to me as a solera was fifty P, which was a lot again.

Again, I'm raised on this concept that to purchase a romantic, I get you kicked out a limerick. So go into the shop and getting a Solaro for 50 P and that being OK. I just remember thinking, I remember feeling like a big boy. I remember going I have my confirmation money and I've got 50 P and I'm going to buy a fucking solaro and it faded a little bit more normal and OK. And also at the same time when I was buying Salerno's in 1995, I was also seeing the cuisine de France counter in the shop.

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

And inside there is food that's precooked. Now, we didn't know really wouldn't know what to fucking do with this, and here's the turning point. Spicy potato wedges circa 1995. This new food arrives called spicy potato wedges. Now where Irish. We understand what potatoes are. We understand what chips are. Chips are deep fried potatoes. We know what they are. They're OK to eat as a treat. They're not extravagant. They are part of our food culture.

But now I'm in a petrol station, a petrol station, in a shop, in a petrol station. And I'm looking at these new things called fork and wedges. They're not that expensive and they're spicy potato wedges and everyone just going, what the fuck is this? We couldn't trust this. You couldn't trust the wedge. Irish people at first could not trust potato wedges because it defied our boundaries and understanding of what a potato was. It was inherently dishonest.

The potato wedge was. Is it a chip? It's not a chip. It's a potato wedge. How do you make it? It's made in the oven. Why is it orange? It's spicy. Is that skin? Is that potato skin? Yeah. We leave the skin on it now, leaving the skin on it. That's a big one. One of the things what Irish people is during times of the famine, we would have eaten the skin as well as the potato.

But the closest thing to classiness in Irish in Ireland was when you remove the skin from the potato. Eating potato skin is kinda shameful. Now, why do I know this? Because I remember. Being in Tipperary, in an uncle's house, my mother's brothers, and this is real rural Tipperary now fucking bog creatures, and I remember seeing my uncle.

Reachin putting his hand in the boiling hot water, pouring out a potato from it and eating through the skin and eating the potato like an apple and whatever way he did it is. My Majesties, the. Because that was that's the equivalent, it was seen as unclassy, it was like it was it was too peasant, like in in the behavior to reach into the pot and eat the potato with the skin like an apple was too close to famine activity.

So now you've got these potato wedges in the hot deli counter with the skin on them. And you're asking the person behind the counter why the fuck that they have skin ways, their skin in the potato wedges, and then they're going. That's just how it is. Their French, its cuisine, the France. They're not chips. This is Kontinental. And then you buy the potato wedges and they're fucking delicious because they're spicy and you're tasting these spices you've never tasted before and I remember eating them, I'm like, what the fuck is this?

It doesn't have to crunch the chips have it has the softness of a boiled potato, but the skin gives it a resistance. And I've got all these new flavors in my mouth. Holy moly. And everyone in Ireland felt the same thing with these potato wedges. Now, here's my hot take about potato wedges.

Human beings right now, I'm going back maybe fucking two million years, possibly longer, are human beings.

For years and years and years and human development. Humans didn't. Human technology, the tools that humans were making a million years ago. Early humans, the human technology didn't change for fucking ages.

We were making the same axes and the same arrowheads for like a hundred thousand years. Then something happened all of a sudden and there was a massive explosion of creativity. And all these new weapons and tools got invented. Something happened like sixty thousand years ago. I think it was for all of a sudden there's a massive explosion of creativity and anthropologists were gone. Why the fuck that? Humans make the same tools for hundreds of thousands of years. And then one thing happens and there's an explosion of creativity.

What was the one thing that happened? The one thing that happened is that humans started to control fire. And when humans started to control fire, it allowed us access to cooked meat. And when we started cooking our meat, more proteins were released and our brains grew. And this caused an explosion of human creativity. And we started to have healthier, more nourished brains. Could think better. We had bone marrow from bones because we're burning the bones and we started inventing more tools.

Also, there's a theory that simply cooking and staring into a fire will afford a human, that the contemplative space that's needed for creativity. So fire did this to the human mind. I think the spicy potato wedge circa 1995 had a similar effect on the Irish consciousness and our identity, the spicy potato wedge, which is something that's kind of familiar. It's a fucking potato. It's a bit like a chip, but it's not it's not because jam bands were there as well.

I left this bed out. There was jam bands, too. Now a jam band was a piece of fried pastry with cheese and tomato. That was too much. No one's fucking what a jam band in 1995 they're going into being only the bravest is fucking with a jam band. In 1995, no one was touching them, but we were going for the potato wedges. The potato wedge was a familiar package with just that extra little bit of spice and that extra bit of potato skin.

The potato wedge on the Irish mind was like early hominids discovering fire. The potato wedge combine with the Celtic Tiger is what made us go yum yum. This is spicy. I feel European. That's what it was, the Pereiro, which made us feel okay with feeling your pain, feeling adventurous, maybe I'll fuckin buy the romantic at meal. What's that? Spaghetti I'm having fucking spaghetti bolognese tonight.

Nineteen ninety, 1996. Let's watch the X Files with spaghetti barnes'. I'm having a Goodfellas pizza. Fuck me, it's the Celtic Tiger. I'm European. So we start now getting adventurous, I'm fucking Shoven, Salerno's up my ass. We're getting adventurous now, and the potato wedge unlocked it all via cuisine, the France, so to really understand the chicken phillip role and where it comes from, you have to go. Celtic Tiger. We're talking 96 onewhere 96 was a hot year for the Celtic Tiger, the Celtic Tiger and Ireland.

Like I said, everyone had everyone was doing well, high employment and a huge amount of home ownership and a massive amount of development and things being built and a huge amount of people being employed in the construction construction industry. And. The first ever. Modern Irish piece of food that we can call our own is the breakfast roll, and the breakfast roll starts to become a thing around 1996 and it's very heavily associated with the Celtic Tiger.

The breakfast roll is a fucking abomination, but so cuisine. The French set up these hot deli counters in petrol stations all around Ireland. Fucking petrol stations like this is this is what happens when you have a famine. This this is this is the Brits really the fucking no on us. So we've got petrol stations become the new places of eating in Ireland, in the Celtic Tiger, you have all these builders, construction workers doing hard, hard fucking labour and tons of money.

And their food of choice now becomes the breakfast roll, which is an exclusively Irish invention.

The breakfast roll basically is I don't know who invented it. It probably happened organically. About 1996, you went to the cuisine, the French counter in any petrol station in Ireland and you were a builder, you took the French bread, the French baguette, the European French baguette. And inside in this, you inserted. To rashers to sausages, to black puddings, white pudding and an egg, an entire full Irish breakfast placed in a French baguette, and this is the breakfast roll.

And this became synonymous with the Celtic Tiger builders. This was the food and it was uniquely Irish. We invented it. We invented the fork and breakfast roll. Now, if you deconstruct the breakfast, roll symbiotically and you look at it in the context of the Celtic Tiger, the fry up, the fry up within Irish culture, the fry up, which is sausages, rashers, eggs, that's the biggest treat you can imagine the fry up as a symbol of Irishness.

What it meant was at the fry up is like what you need at the end of Lent. I mentioned earlier about. Fuckin asceticism within religions like in Ireland, we used to do lenth so you wouldn't people wouldn't eat meat and at the end of Lent you have the big fry up.

Are the fry up is what you have on a Sunday after you've had a feed of pints. It's it's a reward. It's that was Irish success. Irish excess. In the 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever. Was the fry up, so the fry up is is placed within the lexicon of Irish culture as the excessive meal of celebration. Something that happens once a week, something that happens after the first celebration is the drink, the feed opines the whiskey.

That's that's how we understand how to celebrate. But the next day, you have your bacon, eggs, rasher, and that's Irish excess. So the breakfast roll via the Celtic Tiger is like, what? I'm going to have a fry up every fucking day. And I'm European now, so I'm going to off the fry up into a fucking French bread. Olalla, because I'm a big Celtic Tiger buddy and I'm going around with all my euros. And that's what the the breakfast roll became.

This fry up in French bread that's became the food of continual celebration continue an Irish celebration, but wrapped within the within. The breakfast roll is also an expression of self-loathing. The Brek, like the breakfast roll, isn't pretty. The breakfast roll, as is, is several different fatty pork products wedged in bread and, you know, it's bad for you and, you know, it's excessive. And it's also it's like you're eating a caricature of there's a there's shame in the construction and the dimensions of a breakfast roll inherently contain shame in their.

It's like we're athing ourselves, this caricature of of Irish people as being. Dirty pigs, dirty, uncultured pigs and the breakfast roll, it's all this pork with theatrical amounts of of fucking. Ketchup on it like blood, and then the bread essentially becomes a gutter, so it's like you're eating a drunk Irishman covered in blood in a gutter. All this symbol in his symbolism exists within the breakfast table. And it was excessive and it wasn't healthy and it was kind of embarrassing.

But we did it anyway. And breakfast will still exist. But they don't carry cultural capital anymore. The breakfast was was a big deal in the early 2000s, the late 90s, early to mid 2000s, it was a big deal is there was a novelty song by Pat Schadt called Jumbo Jumbo Breakfast Roll Man. This was something that was within the lexicon of the breakfast roll up until about 2008.

As a meme, as a totem, is it it was the chicken phillip role of now again, it's not just a foodstuff, it's not just something you eat for breakfast. The breakfast roll had attained the iconic value that a pint of Guinness had. Do you know what I mean? The pint of Guinness isn't just a drink, a pint of Guinness isn't just a drink. Yes, it's lovely. Yes, it's a drink. It's not just a drink.

It's it's an icon. It's a totem. It communicates meaning to other people. It's a conversational point that we can rally around. So Guinness isn't just a drink. The breakfast world wasn't just a fucking sandwich. It was an icon. It communicated something and it became synonymous with the Celtic folk and Tiger up until 2008. Breakfast rod is still there. People still eat them, sometimes it's lost its cultural value, it's not important anymore. The Chicken Phillip role rose from the ashes of the breakfast roll.

OK, so I went looking at Google Trends for breakfast, roll and chicken fellate roll. So when I type breakfast roll into Google Trends, there's again a dip and a trough. But a clear mention of it from I think Google Trends only goes back to 2004, but it's steadily being mentioned. All the way up, but it there's no sharp rise as such, but then when I look at chicken, fill it, no mention until January 2008, then a steady dip and trough from there on that.

So the chicken federal starts to enter public consciousness around 2008, 2009 as the breakfast roll declines. The breakfast roll got tarnished. What happens in 2008 to the recession, the recession and the breakfast roll when the recession, the recession, the Celtic Tiger officially ended in 2010 when the banks were bailed out.

When we think of the Celtic Tiger, we think of it as a time of great excess, people dead too much, people were irresponsible and the breakfast roll became an icon and a totem of that excess. The breakfast roll now is like. Don't get that mortgage, don't buy that car, don't get in Death Cab the fuck down, don't do cocaine, don't get that bouncy castle. You don't need decking out the back garden. You don't. That's what the breakfast roll means.

Now, the breakfast roll means I had to move to Australia. That's what the breakfast roll means, we still eat it, it's delicious, but it no longer has mimetic value, it doesn't carry. You're not proud of the breakfast roll. You're ashamed of the breakfast roll, the bread, the breakfast roll to me is I'm kind of embarrassed by it. I'm going to hide my breakfast roll, you know, I know it's bad for me. Also, the breakfast roll is is we've always fundamentally understood it as as a completely irrational male.

Like I remember around 2006, a buddy of mine from France called Alex was over in Ireland studying. And me and Alex used to have great crack. And then one day I brought him to a petrol station and gave him a breakfast roll. And this is a Frenchman and he fucking loved it, but. I remember him going, you guys fuckin eat these for breakfast. You fuckin eat this for breakfast, and I'm like, yeah, you fucking eat this for me.

He couldn't believe it, he couldn't believe this huge French baguette full of pig. He just couldn't. He loved it, but he couldn't believe it. And I remember being taken aback on Foch. I haven't thought about the breakfast roll like this, but this French dude thinks that that this food stuff that he has is fucking mad. He thinks it's irrational. And this is a French man. Cuisine, this is the place for fucking cuisine the France comes from, and he's eaten this like it's an irrational abomination.

And that's the first time I really started to think critically about the breakfast roll, like the breakfast roll. It's chaotic. It's chaotic ambition. That's what it is. The breakfast roll is the Celtic Tiger. Alex was from France. He comes from a food culture, so people with a food culture are able to plan out food. They're able to know what's OK, what flavors go with each other. The breakfast roll, isn't that the breakfast roll?

Is food just thrown into bread and shouted at over and over again? That's what the breakfast roll is. It's incredibly ambitious chaos, just like the Celtic Tiger. It's someone with too many mortgages. It's the banks giving out too many loans. That's what the breakfast roll is. It echoes that attitude and anyone on the outside is going to chill the fuck out.

Paddy, relax. The fuck is this? And if you want to see a far more hyperreal example of this, there's a place called Barack Obama Plaza, which is a petrol station in Ofili named after Barack Obama. Again, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is that? The fact that I even have to say that God help anyone listen to this was information and the fact that I even have to say that so does a fucking petrol station in Philly named after Barack Obama because his ancestors came from NERIT.

Came from a place called Moneygall. So they so they built a petrol station and named it after Barack Obama. And in this petrol station, they have a fucking huge deli counter, one of the greatest helicopters you've ever seen. And what they've done there is they've really taken things too far. So in this place, you can get a full dinner inside in a French role, so whatever about the fuckin breakfast roll, you can go in here and you can get a bacon and cabbage, bacon, cabbage, potatoes and white sauce in a fucking French role.

They've gone too far. And and what fascinates me about it and you can get a Sunday dinner inside in a roll covered in gravy. It's fucking nuts. It's it's it's insane and. I've often like if I'm coming back from Dubina unhappen to Barack Obama Plaza now, I always get it. I get a chicken villarroel when I'm in there because I'll tell you why. In Barack Obama Plaza is also a supermax there. So when you get a chicken, feed it roll in Barack Obama Plaza, the cheese is supermax cheese.

So it's very unique. But they have dinners, enrols.

And. I can't walk away from that and not think about this. I think what's happened localized purely in Barack Obama Plaza is they've taken so this Irish struggle to find a food culture where we make these fucking bizarre petrol station meals, these bizarre petrol station sandwiches they have melded.

Irish petrol station, food culture and American frontier ism, because it's named after Barack Obama. I can't go to my petrol station and get a full dinner inside a role because they'd say, get the fuck out, you're mad, but not in Barack Obama Plaza because Barack Obama Plaza is about the American dream. So they've taken something as Foxx bag Irish as a bacon and cabbage dinner. They've taken the French role and then the attitude of a fucking crazy Texas oilman and applied American from terrorism to a role.

And now I'm now I'm staring at bacon and cabbage and white sauce inside and a fucking roll in a petrol station named after Barack Obama.

Where does a five foot tall cardboard cutout of Barack Obama you can get your photograph taken beside and they sell in my book there as well. Fucking hell.

The Brits really did a number on us, didn't they? So that's a Segway in a very different irrational direction, but one that's worthy of talking about because it's localized to one petrol station. But the chicken fill, it all emerges from the ashes of the breakfast roll.

Around 2008, 2009, it's very closely associated with the recession. OK.

2010, that's when. Anyone who was involved in the construction industry is out of work completely, and if they're not completely out of work, they've emigrated to Australia or Canada or the UK or whatever the fuck. So the car breakfast, rural market are gone. The lads who are on the way to the construction site with money in their pockets who want this huge calorific meal in the morning to prepare themselves for lift and blocks, are they these lads don't have work or they're not around.

So people aren't buying breakfast rolls anymore. And that period, the recession was really, really depressing. That was really depressing. So you don't want anything that's associated with the Celtic Tiger because a breakfast roll would simply make you feel a little bit sad because of what it represented. So insteps the. She can feel it wrong from those ashes now that she can feel it really wasn't. Like chicken, it was a lunchtime thing. There's not a lot of breakfast people in the petrol stations because not a lot of people have jobs, people are eating breakfast in their homes, they're they're eating cereal.

So the breakfast market, the kind of hours of it is gone like one of the around 2015 when the recovery started to happen a little bit.

The one thing I used as a marker in Limerick for the economy getting better was simply seeing people buying breakfast, seeing people sitting down or going somewhere unpartisan. Breakfast to me suggested people have a little bit of disposable income. So people aren't buying the breakfast roll in 2010 because no one has a job, no one's leaving their gaff, but they're still a little bit of a market for the chicken fill role. Students, mainly chicken, fill that role. I don't associate it with people working students.

The Chicken Fill It role was the food of People in University 2010, 2011, 2012, also what became very popular around that time. She can fit it roles became something that was sold as a cheap offer, so you might guess she can fill it role and a drink for three euro. And this was aimed at students because the cuisine the France counters in the deli counters in the petrol stations weren't doing business anymore because, like I said, Celtic Tiger over.

So it's like, fuck, we got to sell this shit to someone. Let's aim for students three quid and they can get a drink as well. And from there, the chicken Philip rolled his barn. The thing with the chicken, Philip roll. It's not extravagant. The chicken, Phillip Roller's is a steer, the chicken Filiatrault. Isn't embarrassing, the chicken role is affordable. Like here, here's one thing. If you if you come across a breakfast roll for a fiver, people won't complain about it, but when you see a chicken of chicken, feed it, roll for a fiver.

People would complain about it like I remember about twenty thirteen working up in RTA and going into Donnybrook Fair, which is this posh place in Dublin, and the chicken fill will be in a fiver and may be in fucking outraged. Got fuck me a fiver for a chicken Philharmonia taking the piss. Some people use the hike of price in a chicken federal to measure how well the economy is doing. If you're paying a fiver for a chicken federal, you're saying, Oh, the boom is back to get me.

So the chicken, it really means affordable recession food, which it'll it'll fill you up.

It's really tasty. It was comfort food. And it's still going strong, and that's the chicken Phillip role has it means something. It's iconic. It has power. Now I'm trying to figure out what does the chicken feed it really mean? No, like I said, like, everyone's talking about chicken, Filiatrault, everybody. I think what it means the chicken feed it roll. It signifies the lessons that we learned from the Celtic Tiger and who we would like to be.

So the breakfast roll was a chaotic, ambitious abomination of excess. The chicken fit it role is austere. You're not breaking the bank. It's what you think is chicken breast. So in your mind, you're going chicken breast is healthy. Like, here's the thing. When you eat a breakfast roll, you know, that's not healthy. But when you eat a chicken, feed it roll, you think it's healthy because you're looking at a cone. It's breaded chicken breast.

It's bright. There's lettuce in here, let's fucking lettuce, man, that's green. So when you eat a chicken, it you think you're actually being sensible and nutritious when you eat it. The chicken phillip role isn't showing off, you'll get spicy, you can have a spicy chicken feed it all, but it's it's it's still it's it's a hearty lunch. It's not visibly offensive to the eyes. A breakfast roll looks like a car crash of a breakfast roll is an act of violence.

Chicken it isn't. It's nicely course shaped pieces of chicken fillets. And, you know, when you open it up, it's not that messy. Sometimes the cheese goes somewhere. Chicken fellate roll is sensible. I associate the chicken phillip role with students and maybe people working in offices, the chicken fill it role.

Is the chicken federal knows it's never getting the mortgage the breakfast roll wants to have for mortgages, chicken feed, it knows it's not getting a mortgage chicken feed. It really wants to work. And Facebook. Breakfast roll wants to build its own gaf. Breakfast roll wants to do coke chickenfeed, it might take a yolked electric picnic. Maybe she can fit it, role is proud of being Irish, she can fit a role like. You know, a lot of early chickenfeed at roll aficionados circa 2009 emigrated, you know, to finish their degrees in college and they went to Australia.

And they went to Canada and in Australia and Canada, they talk about the chicken federal role, they search for the delis that can give them the Irish chicken federal and nobody can find us. They can find things that are similar, but they can't find the Irish chicken. It in Canada are in Australia or in America. And Irish people talk about it as a point of pride. I can't wait to get back and have the chicken Filiatrault. Ultimately, what the chicken phillip role represents to it's the lie, the big lie of Ireland in all.

It's Ireland that thinks it's prosperous, but really it relies on multinational corporations, the chicken, Philip Roth thinks that it's comfortably Irish and European.

It's not like. The bread is in folk and French cuisine, de France is in French from Dublin. It's not French bread. The chicken that's used in chicken feed, it rolls, yes, some of it is chicken breast, but it's like mechanically farmed. It's not a full chicken breast. The chicken is cheap chicken that's imported from Asia. A lot of it is bred a huge amount of fat in it. And the greatest lie of the chicken feed at all is the cheese that's used.

We all get cheese on our chicken. Filiatrault. It's very tasty, but we live in Ireland. Let's. Ireland. You know what I mean, I'm talking about is not having a food culture. One thing that we have in Ireland is is possibly the best dairy products in the world. Carry gold and butter like that. It is fetishized the world over. Listen to Yangs talking about butter. The best butter to them is carry gold. We have incredible cheese products, incredible butter.

But the cheese on our chicken feed, it isn't really cheese, it's this weird, rubbery, processed shit. It's like where where in Ireland, why can't we have real cheddar on our chicken feed at all if it's so Irish?

So it's it's just it's the illusion. We think we have pride in the chicken feed it, but it's a fucking facade. It's a big giant lie. It's a big lie. You know, the chicken phillip role is. Tell me what's so good about Ireland, we've got Google, we've got Facebook, we've got over not paying any taxes, lads. They're just laundering money here. Yeah, but they're providing loads of employment, like, all right, OK.

And how are you getting on? You're saving for a house. No, no. Why not? I like my rent is a bit high. Oh, how high. I you know yourself. So you're not getting a house. I don't think I'm going to get a house. All right. OK, that's what a chicken federalised, you know. Holding it aloft above your shoulder, which are proud Irish meal made a fucking shitty chicken and rubber cheese chomping down with a spicy belly full of lies from the forecourt of a petrol station.

You know what I mean? That's what the chicken feed at all is. It's the great lie of post Celtic Tiger Ireland, which we think we're proud of. But how would a French person make a chicken philippon? They have the best French bread, they'd have the best French cheese, they'd have the best French chickens with the best French bread, and it would be authentic and it'd be rooted in food culture. We don't have that. Our chicken feed, it ultimately is it's a it's a multinational corporation that doesn't pay taxes, it's always tank.

And we have this unique the Irish food stuff. It's always thinking that finally we feel European. But really behind it all, we're not we're just pigs covered in our own blood rolling around in the gutter, you know what I mean?

So that's my heart take on and chicken, Philip Roth. I don't. I was going to do something I had no time to talk about fucking teenage discos. Now our links Africa. And I won't do I don't want to do that the lack of justice by just fucking I'll get around with some other podcasts. I'll see what the feedback is like for this. Deji, like me talking about Chicken Fucking Federal's, or are you just saying to me blind, there's enough chatter about chicken fucking philippos.

Leave it to the pros. You talk about Christ foreskin and Renaissance art and leave the chicken feed. It rolls to the pros. All right, God bless Falkoff.