The Blindboy Podcast - Why Fishermans Friend no longer tastes like a recently washed Human anus

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Why Fisherman's Friend no longer tastes like a recently washed Human anus  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Confess it to the petrol dentist, you wet dicklens. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. I'm gonna be whispering this week's podcast because I've been sick for the past three or four days. It started in my throat and it went to my nose and went down to my chest, but my voice is fucked. So I have the microphone turned up nice and loud. And I'm effectively whispering. I'm whispering into the mic this week because if I if I raise my

voice in any way I'll begin to croak like a mating bullfrog. Well my microphone is turned up very loud so I've had to turn off my mini fridge. I've had to turn off my mini fridge. I've recently had to purchase a mini fridge from my office. It's tiny, slightly larger than a lunchbox, and it holds one pint of milk and keeps it cold. That's all my mini fridge does. Outside of that it makes a high pitched whistling noise, which could definitely be picked up by this microphone because I haven't turned up so loud so I had

to turn off the fridge. Let's turn the fridge off for the duration of this week's recording. I said I had to buy this fridge. I had to buy this fridge under JOR-S. I don't want this fridge. So in my office, as you know, I record this podcast in an office building, in a very large office building, with many other businesses, lawyers, accountants, solicitors, whatever the fuck you want. And then I have my little office where I record my podcast. But we have, we have shared spaces. We have shared spaces in the office building. And there's a shared canteen.

In this shared canteen, everybody in the building can make coffee, can make tea, or food. There's fridges to store your food. It's a communal space. A communal fucking canteen. But the company who run this, this office that I rent, the company that run, you know, the shared office space, they're greedy cunts.

We used to have public milk. We used to have milk in the fridge that was provided by the office company. Everybody in the entire building would use the milk that was provided by the company that runs the office. You go down to the canteen, doesn't matter who you are, you make your tea, you make your coffee, you open the fridge and there's the milk. You don't have to question who owns the milk, it's everybody's milk. And it's been like that since I've been in this office, since I've been renting it for two years. But recently, the greedy cunts decided that they were going

to change fresh milk to UHT milk, ultra-high temperature milk. It's the milk that you get in hotels. You know hotel room milk that comes in the little sachets? It's milk that's treated at incredibly high temperatures to kill all bacteria and then it's rapidly cooled. And this milk can stay fresh for months months you don't have to freeze it and because of this really long shelf life, UHT milk is significantly cheaper than fresh milk. But it tastes, I don't know what's disgusting the word, it tastes depressing. UHT milk will really make your tea or your

coffee incredibly disappointing and it removes all joy from tea and coffee. Now if you grow up in a hot country where UHT milk is the norm, maybe that's okay. But in Ireland, we're the land of fresh milk. Because of our rain, because of our grass-fed cows, we have the best dairy products in the world. So the Irish palate cannot tolerate UHT milk. So my office, the company that runs my office, they sent out an email during the summer asking everybody, we no longer have the budget for fresh milk in the canteen. How would you feel if we started providing cartons of UHT milk instead?

I was furious when I read this. You greedy bastards I thought. I'd worked out what the weekly milk budget was. Roughly 4 litres of milk were bought every day, 5 days a week. That's about 20 euros. Somewhere between 20 and 30 euros. Just over a thousand euros a year. In a building where lots and lots of companies are paying very very high rents

and a canteen with tea and coffee that's part of that that's part of the agreement so the greedy bastards are they're penny pinching as much as as humanly possible and now they're replacing the fresh milk with UHT milk which is probably maybe five euros a week so I responded immediately and I said no, no. I said we can't have UHT milk in the canteen. And I said it's not just about the taste of milk. I said it would descend into chaos. I promise you it will descend into chaos and you'll regret putting the UHT milk in the fucking canteen. I said here's what's gonna happen. Nobody will willingly choose to put UHT milk into their tea or their coffee. If

you work in an office your tea and your coffee are very very important and you're not gonna willingly reduce the quality of those beverages with UHT milk. So I said here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna provide the UHT milk for everybody, it's not gonna get used. Now what's gonna happen? People are gonna start buying their own fresh milk and crowding, crowding the public fridge. There won't be space in the fridge anymore because there'll be multiple cartons of milk. Not everybody is going to care about stock rotation. You're going to have old cartons of milk. You're going to have the smell of gone off milk. What'll eventually

happen is offices will start buying their own fridges, putting them in their office, plugging them in 24-7. It'll cost you more on electricity and now you've got multiple fire hazards. I said that's what's gonna happen if you do UHT milk. They didn't fucking listen to me. So they went ahead with the UHT milk. I preemptively, I bought myself a little fridge, put it in my own office and I said I'm becoming autonomous, I'm autonomous now and I'm responsible for my own fresh milk. I did that from the start. Don't wanna do it, I'm autonomous now. I'm responsible for my own fresh milk. I did that from the start.

Don't wanna do it, I had to do it. Down in the canteen, you've got multiple people, multiple different offices, one fridge. People start buying milk. People start using other people's milk. Complaints are being made. Now we're all getting emails reminding us, please don't use other people's milk. Complaints are being made. Now we're all getting emails reminding us please don't use other people's milk. Notes start being left on milk. The notes begin

as kind of tongue in cheek jokes. Please don't use this milk, it's our only carton. Ha ha ha said one note. You could tell the person who wrote it felt uncomfortable about marking the territory of their milk but it was something they had to do because everybody was using the milk. But then a couple of days passed. And then I look into the fridge and there's a two litre bottle of milk with a post-it note on it that says,'s milk, stay away. Like I'm only opening the fridge and I recoil a bit. I'm like I wasn't gonna drink it Owen.

I didn't even know who the fuck you are, I wasn't gonna drink your milk. And then I'm like I'm getting pissed off with a note. And now an environment of hostility. This beautiful communal space where everyone's solicitors, accountants, finance, whatever the fuck other people do, everyone getting along together in this shared kitchen of respect and smiles.

Now there's hostility in the kitchen because of passive aggressive nods on cartons of milk. Then what happens? The fridge begins to stink. Why does the fridge begin to stink? Because I look into it and at the back there's a bloated carton of milk and the owner hasn't taken it out but no one wants to touch it in case you get in trouble. Now like I said I'm out of the system. I'm completely out of the system. I have my own little fridge in my office with my own little milk. I saw this happening. I'm completely out of the system. I have my own little fridge in my office with my own little milk. I saw this happening. I took myself out of the system early. But

then this week, as I was sick, I went and bought myself a two litre carton of orange juice. I wanted to be drinking orange juice to help me with my phlegm and to get vitamin C. Now I'm thinking orange juice is safe. No one's fucking with someone's orange juice. Orange juice has never been a communal item in the fridge for the two years that I've been here. It came down this morning. Within three hours, all of my orange juice was gone. That would have never happened. That would have never happened in the past two years. There was nothing but respect for other people's shared space in the canteen, and now you can't

even put orange juice in the fridge and someone's robbing it. And you know why? Because hostility. Hostility. Greed. Selfishness. And fencing. And property, and barbed wire has been introduced to the kitchen. We've gone from the mode of the space has gone from an altruistic

collectivism where people share to a vicious individualism where people protect their items aggressively and then other people steal when backs are turned Individualism and a hostile environment of scarcity That's the only reason someone stole my- multiple people stole my orange juice. Several people decided. I'm take- I don't know who the fuck owns that orange juice but I'm just gonna take

it cuz no one's looking. Maybe it's Owen's orange juice. Yeah we all remember that note Owen. Owen's milk stay away. Well stay away from me drinking your orange juice, you fucking flute. And say, no, it's my orange juice, I need it, I'm unwell, I have a cold. Just like with society, when social nets are taken away, when you don't get a sense that taxes are being spent on the common good for all people, and instead things are pushed towards greed and private ownership and the speculative forces of the market. You lose generosity. You lose compassion,

empathy. You lose community. And you end up with a society that's very protective. Like I'm effectively living in a compound. I went and got my own tiny little fridge with the tiny milk. I'm the fella who said I'm going living in a compound away from everybody. No one can get to my milk. And then everyone else is down there, hostile.

Overly protective, creating resentments. And then other people going, well, I'm gonna fucking steal. That's all happened in the space of two weeks. And now that the canteen is empty, people aren't going down there anymore, or crack. There's too much suspicion. Are you the person who robbed my milk yesterday? Are you the person who wrote that note? The reason I'm saying this too is,

I know that someone who listens to this podcast is actually friends with the general manager of my office building. I don't know how this listener figured out where my office was, but a couple of months back I said I was concerned that the people in the office thought that I was pacing into houseplants that were in the corridors. Somebody was pissing into houseplants in the corridors, right? I don't know who the fuck it was, but I had reason to believe that people thought it might have been me. When I said that, I got a phone call from the general manager saying,

no, no, no, we didn't think you were doing that at all. We did not think for one second that you were pissing into the houseplants. In fact, it turns out it wasn't piss at all. It was protein shakes. Someone had been emptying their protein shakes into office plants, and this was creating a smell. Problem's over, but no one thought that you were pissing into the plants. And I said, how the fuck do you know that?

And he said, my friend listens to your podcast and he told me. So can that friend tell the general manager that to bring back fresh fucking milk into the office, please, for the love of fucking God, get rid of the UHT. Nobody's voluntarily using the UHT. It goes unused in the fridge and we know that you're only providing the UHT milk to fulfill your side of the agreement that we can have tea and coffee. That's also creating a resentment. It's not about milk. You're creating an environment of social chaos. What was once a happy, collective, generous environment in the canteen is now barren and hostile, all because of UHT milk. Just give us back the fresh milk with a love

of fuck. Unhappy work environment. And if that doesn't convince you, somebody's fridge is going to go on fire. Right now people are stocking their offices with fridges, buying them online for 40 quid, leaving them plugged in 24-7, because that's what you have to do with a fridge. One of them's gonna go on fire. That's where we're headed. Give us back the fresh milk you cunts. But the process that I'm describing there, that process that's happening in my office, that's known as skimpflation. It's happening, it's happening all around the world.

We know about inflation, everything's gone a little bit more expensive post COVID and in particular after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Everything's gone a little bit more expensive. So for the company that run my office, everything has gotten more expensive. Lights, heating, electricity, water, all the utilities have gotten more expensive. Rent has gone up too, but they want to maximize profits so they're trying to save money. Right down to the provision of fresh milk in the canteen. So now my cup of tea, my cup of tea that I know so well, that I rely upon, that's a source of repetitive comfort and familiarity. now my cup of tea tastes different because there's

cheaper UHT milk in my cup of tea. That's called skimpflation. Where the taste or texture of a product that you enjoy suddenly changes and you don't know why. But what's happened is, as a response to inflation, the company that's making this product has changed some of the ingredients to save money. Also without raising the price of that good. And it's risky business, because the company who's doing that might lose their customers.

Like I'll give you an example. About three days a week for my lunch, I like to buy a prepackaged ham and cheese sandwich. And I've been buying this exact same prepackaged ham and cheese sandwich for about two years. It's very familiar. It's consistent. It's the exact same every time. But over the past six months, I just gradually found myself not getting the pang anymore. Not wanting to go to the shop and get this specific pre-packaged ham and cheese sandwich.

Very slowly, the sandwich is just...they'd stop becoming tasty. And I'd write it off sometimes, I'd be like, I just got unlucky with this particular sandwich. It'll be better tomorrow. But slowly but surely they started to get shit. Until I didn't want to buy them anymore. And then one day I opened up the ham and cheese sandwich to see that... The ham that I was so familiar with had been replaced with shaving pork fat. It's the only way I can describe it. It's still a ham and cheese sandwich. It's just they're

not using the good part of the ham anymore, just shaving fat. And now it's disgusting, and I won't buy it anymore. That's called skimpflation and it's happening an awful lot. Post-COVID and particularly after the invasion of Ukraine, jars of pesto have been badly hit. If you buy pesto, you might have found that your reliable brand of pesto tastes differently. Well, it's because since 2020, the price of olive oil has gone up by 40% every single year. Global warming means that olive harvests in Spain in particular are shit so there's less olives. There's also a disease that's impacting olive trees brought on by climate change.

So your jar of pesto no longer contains as much olive oil as it once did, and now it contains other cheaper oils that taste differently. The pesto is still the same price, but slowly but surely you're going to fall out of love with your favourite pesto until you don't think about it anymore. Your favorite cereal might taste differently. You'll gradually start to notice it, since the war in Ukraine. Ukraine is massive. Ukraine is known as Europe's breadbasket. Huge amounts of wheat, corn, sunflower oil are grown in Ukraine and sold to Europe and

the rest of the world. That's been severely impacted because of the war. So now there's scarcity. Supply chains have been disrupted. The price of fuel, the price of natural gas has gone up. Companies have had to try and source their corn and their wheat and their sunflower oil from other places that aren't Ukraine, places that might be much further away, more expensive, the transport does those products. Now your cereal that you eat in the morning tastes different because it doesn't contain

as much wheat. Or the wheat that it does contain comes from China and doesn't come from Ukraine and it's a different wheat. But something's up with your cereal and it's so subtle that you don't really know why. And the thing with skimp flation and shrink flation, it's almost a form of gas lighting. You blame yourself. If your cocoa pops taste differently, you tell yourself that your taste buds have changed. Or a lot of people say,

well, I had COVID there about three years ago, and apparently your taste changes permanently after COVID, doesn't it? Maybe that's the case, but for a lot of the food that we're eating, the ingredients are changing and being replaced with cheaper, more inferior ingredients. Shrink fleshing is when goods get gradually smaller. I was on an airplane recently and I ordered a packet of Pringles, you know the small tube of Pringles, and I opened it up and clearly there's three less Pringles. Everything was the same, it was the same price, it's Pringles, but there's less Pringles. The recipe was the same, I was happy with the taste, but there was less. Well that's very noticeable, that was really noticeable. But something like

Mars bars. I've been eating Mars bars since I was a child, and I definitely remember Mars bars being large in my hand. Now when I get a Mars bar, it's tiny in my hand. The change has been so gradual that I don't know that I imagined the Mars bar as being larger when I was a kid, because my hands were smaller. No, Mars bars and Snickers, they're genuinely smaller. They're about the same size now as fun size Mars bars when I was a kid and also now if you want to buy a Mars bar

that's the same size as the Mars bar I had when I was a kid you have to buy what's called a Mars bar duo or a Snickers duo. Olive oil like I said, most people aren't buying olive oil anymore. If you want to get extra virgin olive oil now and cook with it in 2024, it's about the same price as cooking with red wine and also counterfeit olive oil. That's a huge issue, especially with Italian olive oil because the Mafia are involved. Counterfeit olive oil. Counterfeit olive oil is when it's not 100% olive oil. There's other oils involved and they're lying. How I like to keep track of counterfeit olive oil is there's a done stores in Limerick called the Parquay.

And in the Parqu Dunn stores for some reason They store all their olive isles in a fridge and apparently if you want to tell if olive isle is counterfeit or real in a fridge the counterfeit stuff stays as a fluid but real olive isle will solidify and congeal in a fridge and when I I went to the parkway, Dunn's, last week, to observe the olive oils, some of them were fully solid, and then others were liquid. And apparently that's how you can tell if your olive oil is counterfeit or if it's legit. But that might be a bit of an urban myth, so don't take my word for it. It's just something I do for crack.

If you want to see what products are really succumbing to skimpflation, look at the juice section. Go to the juice section in your local supermarket. I mean the fancy juices, the smoothies, mango, pineapple, lychee. The ones that you spend a lot of money on, because you're like, I'm gonna get this blue smoothie now and I'm gonna get all my antioxidants and all these vitamins, I'm gonna get it from this smoothie or this juice that I buy in

the fridge in the supermarket, and I'm gonna spend 7 euro on this. Well, if you look at the ingredients recently, all of them are just mostly apple juice. I'm talking 50% to 70% apple juice, just look at the back. You're not buying a blueberry and goji berry smoothie. You're buying blueberry and goji berry flavored apple juice, because apples don't have to travel. Apples grow on trees. Apple juice is incredibly easy to extract. It's the cheapest ingredient. So now all our juices are just full of apple juice. Even that orange juice that I had in the fridge the other day that was stolen, I know the colour was off. I know that this 100% pure orange juice that I'd bought from my cold, I know by the look

of it. Some pricks after watering this down, I could tell even before I opened it. I'd like to thank you all for the patience that you're exhibiting, because my voice is genuinely quite groaky and brittle this week. Although there was something passionately erotic about that breakdown of supermarket economics. I've been sick for the last four or five days and this has really scattered my podcast research because this has really scattered my podcast research because I just a strange illness where I'd feel okay in the morning and then I'd go into work and then I'd start to feel unwell and I'd have to go home. This week's podcast was actually going to be about the history of toilets. The history of a very specific public toilet. I'm talking about these self-contained, self-cleaning public toilet units that became ubiquitous in European cities. Starting in the 1990s. Well that's what I remember. Every town and city has one of these.

They're known as super lows. Toilets that you put money into. And it's the same design everywhere you go. But what I remember in Ireland, in Limerick, in the 90s, you got about three of these public toilets. They looked like gigantic phone boxes. And the thing is, the city was so proud of these new expensive toilets, that they didn't put them anywhere discreet. They put them in profoundly public spots. So public that nobody in their right mind would use one of these toilets.

I remember as a child being utterly terrified of these public toilets, terrified that if I would ever need to use them We had one Outside a shopping center called Arthur's Key in a very public place And you have this little it's like a kiosk and you put money into it and the door opens by itself you can't close it manually you you have to trust the machine and then you go into the toilet but the fear was if you put money into the door of this toilet and the door closes itself, and then you sit on the toilet, you have to do a number two. What if you're doing a number two and then the door suddenly opens?

And it opens in the most public possible place in your city. Hundreds of people, cars walking past, and the door opens and now you're sitting on the toilet. There's no manual lock, you can't hold the door, you don't control the door in any way. Some robot or electronic mechanism decides whether the door opens or not. You're asking me to trust a robot. So I never ever used one of these public toilets ever

they were terrifying terrifying things and Anytime I needed to use the toilet. I just I'd beg a business, please. Can I use your toilet? I refused to use the the robot room where I have no control over the door where I have to trust a robot When I was like 11, I have to trust a robot. When I was like 11, I used to get anxiety just looking at these public toilets. And then of course, urban legends will emerge. Because these were self-cleaning toilets.

And you'd hear stories. You'd hear stories that people would get locked inside the toilet. You use the toilet, and then the door doesn't open. The robot won't let you out. And then what happens? Bleach cascades from the ceiling. And you get covered in chemicals like an acrid, caustic chemical shower that burns your skin and eyes, and then the toilets disappeared. You don't see as many of these public toilets anymore. I'm not fully sure why that is, and

I came to the realization this week that I've gone my whole life without using one of these very specific self-cleaning toilets. I learned that they're called Sanisets, and they're all made by one company called JC Decaux, a French company. And then it was brought to my attention that there's still one of them left in Limerick. It's actually in the Bardshit district. It's near the Terry Wogan statue. I just walked past it all this time. It's been there for nearly 30 years. I've just never really seen it. So this week I decided I'm gonna go go into this public toilet kiosk. I'm gonna put money into it, and I'm gonna go into this public toilet.

And let the door closed. Because I'm a big boy now. I'm a grown man. I'm an adult. So what if the door opens onto the street? Who gives a fuck? So my plan was this week for the podcast, I was gonna use this toilet, go into a deep dive on the history of this particular type of toilet, and then report back to ye what

my experience was like using one of these terrifying public toilets for the first time. So as I made my way to this particular, this particular superloo, I went past the Terry Wogan statue. I was thinking to myself, right, what do I want to report back to you? I want to let you know whether it was clean or not, how it felt being in there, what the smell was like. And then I said to myself, I can't smell anything right now. I've got a cold, my nose is all blocked, I can't fucking smell anything. How can I use this public

toilet and then not report back to E? How it smelled if it's self-cleaning? I'm very curious about this. I want to know, is a self-cleaning toilet really clean? Does it smell nice? So I said to myself, before I go into this public toilet, I'm gonna pop into Dunn's and I'm gonna buy myself a packet of Fisherman's Friend. Because if I have a Fisherman's Friend, I'll be able to smell for like 5 minutes. Because even if you have a cold, when you take a fisherman's friend it opens up your nose and you can smell again briefly. So I walked into the shop and I scanned all the confectionery, the section with the confectionery, searching for the fisherman's

friend and it wasn't very difficult to find because it's so unique. It stands out. Old reliable fisherman's friend. In its little white paper packet, like a tiny little grandad in a tiny little coffin, dripping in its authenticity. It doesn't belong, it doesn't belong amongst the Mars bars and the Snickers and the fruit pastilles with their garish colours. The fisherman's friend just lies there in its humility. A relic.

A relic from a bygone era. It looks Victorian. It legitimately looks Victorian. So I pick up the fisherman's friend and I purchase it and I'm really looking forward to the heat, the heat on my tongue and my mouth that I'm gonna get when I eat this fisherman's friend so I walk back to the Sanicet, the Superloo, the robotic toilet. I walk out to the robotic toilet and I put my money in and the door opens. And this is the first time in my life I've ever used one of these. This fucking

toilet that I've walked past this every week for 30 years. And here I am. I step inside and the door closes by itself. There's a moment of darkness and the light comes on and suddenly I'm transported. I can't believe I'm in Limerick city centre. I'm in a self-contained room and everything's really clean. I know that all around me, inches away from me, are cars and people bustling about. But this self-contained robot toilet, it's actually quite soundproof. I notice a real sense of peace and privacy and solitude. I think back to times in the past where I was in Limerick City and I needed to go to

the toilet and I chose alternatives. And I'm saying I should have gone into one of these. This is actually quite nice. This is very peaceful. And yes it is clean. This doesn't feel like a public toilet. This is really clean. I'm impressed.

Oh I can't smell anything. I also don't need to go to the toilet. I don't need to go to use the toilet at all for anything. I also don't need to go to the toilet. I don't need to go to use the toilet at all for anything. So I'm effectively just standing in this robot toilet and the only thing I can do is open my fisherman's friend to eat one and then hopefully in like a minute or two I'll be able to smell the inside of this public toilet to see if there's... to see if the self-cleaning brings some nice citrus notes or whatever, fucking pine or whatever. So I stand up and I lean against the sink and I open the fisherman's friend

and I take one out of the packet and it's been so long since I had one, maybe two years. I marvel at how rugged and organic it looks. A fisherman's friend, lozenge, it actually looks a bit like a lump of hash. It has that real unprofessional finish to it, like it was pressed in someone's garage. And I lift the fisherman's friend to my mouth and I place it on my tongue. If the devil ever had a communion way for it to be the fisherman's friend and I'm hit with the The immediate that the heat the heat of the fisherman's friend the intensity of that heat and as it rests on my tongue It gets too hot So then I have to move my tongue around and move the fisherman's

friend around my mouth because if you leave it in one spot it'll like burn a fucking hole in your mouth and I wait to feel the menthol coming upon me, you know that menthol, the cooling flavour in my mouth and then the heat. And as I'm taking this fisherman's friend in, there's something else that I'm chasing. And it's not here. Fisherman's friend is menthol, eucalyptus, burning sensation, bit of licorice. And then there's a final note, and this, the final note of A Fisherman's Friend is the faint scent of a recently washed human anus. There's a final note of human anus about Fisherman's Friend, which I've

known for as long as I've been fucking eating them. It's slightly disgusting. It's a feculent, dung-like, awful taste. And it's the dragon that I chase. Lots of fools have unpleasant notes. Olives, for instance. There's something disgusting and astringent about olives, and that conflict is what makes you want another olive. It's a desire to understand. There's a narrative there. Coffee. Coffee is very bitter. If you gave coffee to somebody who'd never tasted it, they'd say, what the fuck is that? That's poison. But yet we chase the conflict of the bitterness of coffee. There's people who like to eat awful intestines, big in French cooking, a lot of Chinese cooking, people literally searching for the faint taste of shit. One of the most beautiful pieces of writing about food that I know from a book is

The writing about food that I know from a book is the scene in Ulysses by James Jice where the character Leopold Bloom is cooking a set of pig's kidneys and he bites into the kidneys and there's the faint tang of urine. Some foods, they have us coming back because there's something in there that's that's slightly unpleasant that we need to understand. And for me with Fisherman's Friend, there was a hint of a recently washed human anus. And I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. So now I'm hearing this fucking robotic porta potty toilet, whatever you want to call it, standing up. And I've gone for a second fisherman's friend and now I'm chewing it and I'm like, where is it? Where, where, where is that?

Where is the rectum? Where, where has it gone? Is this, I start blaming myself, is this me? I definitely don't have COVID, I've done a COVID test. I'm aware that my nose is blocked, but I'm like, no. Anytime I've eaten Fisherman's Friend before, it's because I've had a black fucking nose. No. The complex taste of recently washed fundament is no longer present in Fisherman's Friend.

They're after skimflating Fisherman's Friend. They've changed an ingredient in these lozenges. And something about that felt like sacrilege. Because the Fisherman's Friend packet, like I said, it's so authentic, it's so Victorian. It feels like something that never, ever changes. It looks like something that could never change because it looks like the lozenges look like they're made in a garage

Don't tell me fisherman's friend. I've gotten rid of whatever ingredient makes it taste like an arse So I chewed so many fisherman's friends and sucked on so many fisherman's friends Chasing the dragon of washed anus, that I didn't actually notice that the time had passed in the fucking toilet, the 15 minutes had passed, and the door actually did swing open. And it swung open. And no one looked in, and I was just standing up with my arms folded, chewing vigorously in a public toilet. I'd forgotten all about the toilet. I didn't care about the toilet anymore. Because something more important was at foot, I needed to find out. Have they changed the ingredients of Fisherman's Friend and what was the ingredient that made it taste like bum bum. So before we continue with that

story let's have a little ocarina pause. I'm not gonna have an ocarina pause this week I think I'm gonna enjoy a fisherman's friend and while I'm doing this you're gonna hear an advert for something. Not Fisherman's Friend. You know, this is one of those podcasts where fucking Acast would be getting at to me going, would you not have asked Fisherman's Friend to sponsor the podcast, seeing as you're speaking about them for the... No, no, because as soon as Fisherman's Friend sponsored this fucking podcast, I can't talk about the taste of anus. It just can't happen.

They won't allow that. So fuck them. I'm deliberately leaving a pause here and I'll see you here and advert I'm deliberately leaving a pause here now see here and advert I'm not being rude now I've gone for a little chew a chew of the fisherman's friend either fucking Once a year. I can't taste any arsehole off it. That's gone. But it's like, what a shame. What a shame.

It's still nice but it's not the fisherman's friend I know and love. So support for this podcast comes from you the listener. I need to start whispering again now. My voice has gone creaky. I was too enthusiastic with the chatting there with the fisherman's friend and now my voice has gone creaky. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast. patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast If this podcast brings you more merriment enjoyment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast?

Please consider supporting the work that I do Because this podcast is how I earn a living So it's my full-time job. So I rent out my office It's how I have the time to research and to write this podcast and the time to fail. 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 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. Patreon.com forward slash the Blimey podcast. Let's keep this podcast listener-funded, listener-funded so that I don't have to...

Do you know the smart thing to do is, oh, I'm thinking about doing a hot take about Fisherman's Friend. Most people are going to ring up Fisherman's Friend and go, will you sponsor my podcast? Like, no. No. I don't think I'm going to make the best podcast if they're sponsoring it. So no. No thanks.

I don't need that. And also the central premise of this is I personally believe that Fisherman's Friend, the quality has reduced. I believe they're after changing an ingredient to save money. And I'm not dealing with the same Fisherman's Friend I was four years ago maybe, and that's really disappointing. Some quick upcoming gigs. This Sunday I'm in Cork, Cork Opera House at the Cork Podcast Festival. Very few tickets left for that. Sounded to about the last 20 tickets for that but do come along if you're thinking of it it's gonna be a wonderful Sunday night podcast in the Car Copper House.

It'll be nice and relaxed. I have an unbelievable guest. I'm talking to a fella called Sean Ronane. He's an artistic man who's an expert on bird song. What more do you want to know? Then in November, I'm in Mayo in Clare Morris on the second of November. 19th of November, I'm in Mayo, in Clare Morris on the 2nd of November. 19th of November, I'm in Vicar Street. I'm in Vicar Street. Those tickets only went on sale

yesterday, even though I've been plugging that gig like a stupid fucking prick for about two fucking months. Plugging it like a langer on the podcast and the tickets only went on sale yesterday. on the podcast and the tickets only went on sale yesterday. Then February, February 25th I'm up in Belfast in the Waterfront Theatre on my Australia tour in April. My Australia tour is very very nearly sold out and I'm in fucking New Zealand as well. Sky City Auckland, Powerhouse Brisbane, Enmore Theatre Sydney, Palais Theatre Melbourne, State Theatre Parth, and that's it. Find your tickets at those venues. Thank you all for the patience this week again. I really am whispering. I really am whispering a lot, my voice is quite fucking sore and it's not pleasant talking but I'm gonna get through it anyway.

So Fisherman's Friend are genuinely quite an iconic throat lasange, they're the real deal. Part of me was thinking, you know, is this a fake old product? But no, Fisherman's Friend genuinely, it comes from 1865. If you look at the front of the packaging, the old style packaging, it says 1865. You do get a sense that this lozenge and this package has not changed in a very long time. This is a piece of, this is a heritage product here. Something which should be preserved and not fucked with.

There's a little fishing village on the west coast of England called Fleetwood. If you were in like Dryadda in Ireland and you looked directly across the sea you'd arrive at Fleetwood. And Fleetwood, it's just a bit up from Blackpole. It was a little village that was sustained entirely by its fishing community, particularly deep-sea fishermen. So the fishermen in Fleetwood would go off into the depths of the Irish Sea or as far up as Iceland and they'd do some pretty hardcore deep-sea fishing in extremely cold environments. And sometime around 1860, a lot of these fishermen went off up to Iceland.

Freezing cold storms iced the whole shebang. And they came back home to the port of Fleetwood, and a local chemist by the name of James Loftos. He went up to the lads on the boat, how are you getting on lads, what's the crack? Can you tell me what fish you caught out at sea? And none of the fishermen were able to answer him. The freezing cold conditions that they'd experienced out at sea meant that their voices were gone, their throats were fucked. They couldn't even tell their friend James, the local pharmacist, what fish they'd caught. So James Lofthouse went back to his

pharmacy and he thought to himself, Jesus those fishermen, they really need something to warm themselves. Now they can't drink whiskey, they can't drink rum or anything like that because they're on the high seas, the deep seas in a trawler. They can't be getting drunk, they need to be sober, especially during a storm. Maybe I could make something for these fishermen, something that will warm the inside of their mouths and protect their throats. So James Lofthouse got to work on a little concoction, a little tonic. And it contained menthol, eucalyptus, and capsaicin, which is the ingredient that makes chili peppers hot. And as a pharmacist, his intention was,

is that the menthol, it has this anesthetic effect. And it also, the menthol makes the inside of the mouth and the nose very sensitive and it opens it up. So the menthol was going to open up the inside of their mouths. And then the eucalyptus that was going to soothe the inside of their mouths. And then the capsaicin that works in the opposite direction of the menthol. The capsaicin was going to work with the menthol to make it feel really, really hot inside in their mouths. And then to top it all off, he added some licorice to make the mixture a little bit

sweeter and easier to drink. So he put this into a bottle and he went back to his friends, the fishermen, and said, lads, take swigs of this the next time you're out at sea and it might protect your throats. So the lads took it off they went out off the fucking Iceland and they came back and when they came back they were able to talk and they said to James Loftos, holy fuck that was amazing your tonic really protected our throats out there in the deep sea. It didn't matter how freezing cold the winds were, how much ice was there.

When we drank that tonic, it made us feel like our throats and our mouths were hot. Please, can you make us more? That's incredible stuff. So James Loftos, the chemist in Fleetwood, he started making this tonic and like everybody working in Fleetwood was a fisherman they'd all drop into his chemist and buy bottles of this tonic and this became known as fisherman's friend like 150 years ago. The problem was a lot of lads come back from sea and they'd say fuck it man the seas were rough and the battles broke. So then James Laugh-To's thought,

Maybe these don't need to be, maybe it doesn't need to be a drink or a tonic. Why don't I thicken this up, add some gum to it like it's a sweet, and make lozenges, and give these to the fisherman? And then that's what he did, and that's when the fisherman's friend was born, 150 years ago.

And to this day, every single, like fisherman's friend, that's known the world over. If you're in America, Canada, wherever the fuck you are, you know what fisherman's friend is, it's ubiquitous. But every single fisherman's friend to this day is still made in that tiny little town of Fleetwood. And the fishermen are all gone. The fishing industry collapsed completely, started in the early 20th century, but by the 1960s there were no more deep-sea fishermen in Fleetwood. The

industry just disappeared but the Fisherman's Friend factory that became the main industry of this little village of Fleetwood. Now Fisherman's Friend is the biggest factory there. It employs loads of people, half the fucking town and every Fisherman's Friend in the world is made in this factory on one machine and that information gave me a feeling of confidence. A feeling that I could find something out. Like why, why, why don't fisherman's friend have that faint... that faint bang of recently washed anus anymore? Where has it gone? What's happened?

Or is the problem with me? But I reckon I could try and find out. So the core ingredients of Fisherman's Friend, the medicant, the bit that soothes the throat, it's those three ingredients. Eucalyptus, menthol, and capsaicin, the stuff that comes from chili peppers. And when those three ingredients are mixed together in the factory, they refer to that as Fleetwood fire. That's the main ingredient. And then the final ingredient

that's there in bulk is licorice. Now regarding that... that faint waft of anus, I'm familiar with that... that asshole vibe from dark licorice. Do you remember the licorice? Do you remember that licorice you'd get as a kid, right? And it was shaped like a stick of dynamite. And it had it had sherbet in the dynamite. But then the fucking fuse of the dynamite was black licorice. That licorice, dark black licorice, not red licorice, dark black licorice, the darker the better. Give that a sniff. That extra note, that final note on that, that the complexity of that real dark black licorice that has that dunginess, that feculence, it's arcy, it's arcy, there's something arcy about it.

And that dark black licorice arciness is what's currently missing from Fisherman's Friend now. So from that I can deduce something's happened with the licorice in Fisherman's Friend. The other piece of information that points towards licorice in Fisherman's Friend being the issue, it turns out I have a couple of podcast listeners in Fleetwood. Fleetwood in Lancashire, where the factory is. Because I put a call out on Instagram yesterday and I said look does anyone living in Fleetwood, does anyone have a relative in the factory and someone sent me a photograph, a photograph of the panel, the panel on the machine

that makes Fisherman Friend. Now on this it's a very simple panel with with multiple buttons and on each button above it is the name of an ingredient. Right? Very simple. One of them says medicament. Now I know that the medicament, that's the Fleetwood fire. It's the trinity of those flavours that I mentioned.

Another one says colour, glucose, discharge and then a final button says licorice. But the licorice button is different. All the other buttons, the names of the ingredients, are carved into the machine. Whereas with the licorice button, the word licorice is placed over the button using a sticker, which suggests that it might have been something else before. Something has changed in the licorice department, and there's a piece of evidence that points towards it. So first off, what is licorice? Licorice comes from the root of a plant. It's a plant that, I'm not even going to pronounce it because I can't, but it's a plant that

humans have been growing and using for years and years and years, and the dried root of this plant is licorice. I suppose similar enough to ginger, like ginger, very strong tasting plant, that's a root, well licorice, incredibly strong taste to these roots, and then these are dried and processed. The roots are dried, and licorice is extracted from that. The licorice plant, it only grows in a few places in the world. What makes the plant kind of strange is it likes a salty soil.

Now, salt can make a soil completely toxic. Not a lot of plants will grow in a salty soil, but licorice loves to grow in a salty soil. So I needed to find out, you know, where are fishermen's friends getting their licorice? And how do I find that out? The first thing is I did is I went to I went to Google Maps and I went to Google Maps. And I went to Fleetwood, the town of Fleetwood, Lancashire, and Google Maps. And I found the Fisherman's Friend factory. And I just walked around the factory in Google Maps. And lo and behold, what I saw outside the factory

on fucking Google Maps was what appeared to be a truck. You know those trucks that have canisters on the back that are clearly carrying liquid? Like a truck that's carrying petrol or oil. So there was a truck outside this factory, outside the fucking fisherman's friend factory, that appeared to be, it had its arse in the air and it was made dumping a liquid substance into the factory. So I say to myself, that could be the fucking licorice. They need a lot of licorice. Maybe it's arriving by truck.

The design on the truck looked strange. It was a German company that I'd never seen. They were called Stein-Guffer. So I went searching for Stein-Guffer, Stein-Guffer Trucks, and it's a German company that specializes in transporting liquids. So then I went searching their databases for evidence of transporting licorice or licorice suppliers that they work with, and then I found one or two licorice suppliers that this German trucking company do work with. So now what I've got so far is that I know that something

has changed in with licorice because I've seen it on the machine. I've got this a photograph of this German truck outside the fisherman's friend plant dumping liquid. Now I've traced this truck company to Germany and I can prove that they have links with a licorice supplier. Well out of the four suppliers they were using, three of these suppliers were based in a country called Uzbekistan. So I start looking for links between Uzbekistan and Likurus And something really strange and beautiful starts to emerge

So countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan That area there Which is... It's not quite Asia, it's not quite Europe, it's not quite Russia. We tend to ignore this area. The only cultural context they have for Kazakhstan is like, Borat, you know? But we don't hear a lot about these areas there. We do know that these countries are quite poor. Well in Uzbekistan, there's a thing called the Aral Sea.

And I say thing because it's difficult to describe. The Aral Sea is the world's fourth largest lake. It's a lake that's so big, it's called the Sea. Now the biggest lake that I've ever seen, I've seen Lake Michigan in Chicago. That's the biggest lake I've ever seen and when I stood on the shores of Lake Michigan, it didn't feel like a lake because I couldn't see the other side. It felt like a sea. So this Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, it's bigger than Lake Michigan. This Aral Sea, it's bigger than Ireland. It's fucking huge. But it's a lake. The reason I call

it a thing is, the Aral Sea doesn't exist anymore. So the fourth largest lake in the world, a lake so big that it's pretty much an ocean, has disappeared since 1960. When the Soviets controlled Uzbekistan, they were trying to grow the cotton industry and other agriculture. So what the Soviets did was all the rivers that were connecting to the Aral Sea, they diverted all these rivers and sent the water to irrigate these massive cotton fields. The Aral Sea then didn't have any rivers leading into it it so it became a stagnant lake and it

slowly started to evaporate. But as it started to evaporate, there's less water but still a bunch of salt so the lake becomes saltier and saltier until it's toxic. And now every living thing in the lake dies. This is by about 1970 now. Several species of fish and animals, completely extinct. But more than that, this Aral Sea, so a lake that's bigger than Ireland, so big they call it a sea, which has obviously been there for millions of years.

This gigantic huge lake used to sustain communities. There used to be communities of people in Uzbekistan, just like Fleetwood over in England, and they were fishing communities. In thousands of years, what do you do? We fish. We fish on the gigantic fucking lake that's bigger than Ireland. That's where we get our life from. By 1970 that's gone. Because now the lake is stagnant. It's half the size. The water is salty. Everything is dead. There's loads of fertilizer in the water. And it slowly just starts to disappear and disappear, disappear. And now the Aral Sea isn't there anymore. It doesn't exist. This is what I mean when I say we tend not to talk a lot

about countries like Uzbekistan. I can't believe I never knew that the fourth largest lake in the world existed within our lifetimes, and now it's completely gone. It's gone. Like, gone, gone. The Aral Sea is so gone that it's not called the Aral Sea anymore. Now it's called the Aralcum Desert. And it's one of the strangest landscapes you'll ever see. It's completely barren, white desert made of salt, with thousands and thousands of rusting ships in the ground.

So the entire fishing communities that lived on this huge lake, the water just disappeared and disappeared and they could do nothing with their boats and the boats were just left there. So it's an area about the size of Ireland. It looks like hell. It looks like purgatory. Nothing can grow because the soil is salt and toxic chemicals left over from fertilizer. It's a barren apocalyptic wasteland that shouldn't exist. It shouldn't exist. It's not natural. Fifty years ago it was the fourth largest lake in the world. Wildlife gone, species extinct, communities destroyed, fishing communities gone back a thousand years destroyed. But

interestingly, the one thing that will grow is licorice. I mentioned earlier, licorice grows in a salty soil. Licorice has traditionally been used by human beings to clean up soils that are salty or land that's been reclaimed from the sea. Licorice will thrive in a salty soil and take the salt out of it. So licorice has grown so well in the dried up Aral Sea that now Uzbekistan and another place called Karakalpakstan in the past 10 years have become world leaders in the export of licorice. They're providing the cheapest licorice because they can grow so much of it with all this salty soil. I started off speaking about skimflation, where a product that you love, something about

it changes as a result of inflation, because the people making that product, they change a core ingredient for something cheaper and sell you the same product. And then all of a sudden you're like, something's wrong and I don't know, I think something's off with this, it's not the same. So I can't fully prove it. But I reckon what's after happening is, Fisherman's Friend have changed their licorice supplier. And judging by the trucking company they were using, I reckon Fisherman's Friend have gone for this cheaper Uzbekistani licorice that's grown in this salty sea. And whatever it is about this Uzbekistani licorice, it tastes a little different. It doesn't taste like recently washed human anise. But if my theory is correct, there's something quite beautiful and poetic about it.

Because, like I said, fishermen's friend, it literally started off as the friend of the fisherman in this little village called Fleetwood in England that had a thriving fishing industry. Boats and trawlers and here's these sweets for when you go off into your trawler. That's what this is. And then the fishing industry disappeared from Fleetwood but fishermen's friend remained and provided employment to the town. So people whose parents were fishermen, they ended up working in this factory making sweets. But now completely coincidentally, on the other side of the world, you've got

a gigantic lake that doesn't exist anymore. A lake that had thriving fishing communities. A lake that is now a terrifying desert of rotting rusty ships on an ocean bed that's not an ocean bed anymore it's a fucking salty desert and licorice is thriving in the salty toxic soil of this former lake surrounded by dead ships. The Uzbekistani farmers who are farming this licorice, their great-grandparents, would have been fishermen. Fishing the lake thousands of feet above their head doesn't exist anymore. It just feels like fisherman's friend without even knowing it is after reviving another community of fishermen

that had to disappear because of economic circumstances. There's something folkloric about that. There's something, there's something mythic going on there. There's an energy, a vibration of this that I enjoy. It's still the fisherman's friend. It doesn't taste like a recently washed arse, but it's still a friend of the fisherman and the fisherman's grandchildren. Okay, that's all I've got time for this week. I really did not want to talk. I promised myself I was gonna do like a 30 minute podcast this week my voice is fucked I can't believe I just spoke for 70 fucking minutes but that hot take as as bizarre and strange as it was that definitely ranks as one of my my oddest episodes for sure but I enjoyed that I enjoyed working

my way through all those hot takes and all the surprises that came about in this week's research. I thought this was going to be about toilets. You know, I didn't know it was going to be about this. Rub a dog, kiss a swan, genuflect to a mouse. Dog bless. I'm sorry. You Thank you.