Sort-of memes that are cracking you up at the moment

His Xmas song is rather lovely though

Xmas thread >>>>>>>

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straight to the Stand Up Comedians not cracking us up thread with him...

Bad time to post this?

https://youtu.be/pr97vvh3VAM

Why do the English have this thing about the Irish and potatoes ? Oh yes because it’s a culturally engrained stereotype from when they, at best, watched on as a million Irish died of hunger when the famine hit and another million had to emigrate.
Lazy racist trope.

In my case I've never had a thing about potatoes and the Irish.

However, my wife (who's from Kildare), and her best friend from school (so also Kildare), and a former colleague of hers (from Dublin), and her husband (also Kildare) definitely have a thing about potatoes.

Extra potatoes - more than I ever thought reasonable - are a requirement if we're cooking dinner together. Extra potatoes will be ordered if we're out for dinner in a restaurant that serves potatoes.

Every wedding I've been to in Ireland has featured extra potatoes (disappointingly, generally only three ways, boiled, roast and mash), brought round time after time by waiting staff who have little difficulty unloading their burden onto the already potato-rich plates of willing guests.

So IM(undoubtedly limited)E it may be a trope, it may be a stereotype, it may be culturally engrained, and it's almost certainly based on the colonially-forced export of grains, but nonetheless it's based on fact.

Would you like another chip?

My uncle was a potato salesman - travelled Europe selling Ulster spuds to farmers. Seemed like a fun job. He was very proud that when we went anywhere in Europe, he could tell us where the nearest fields of spuds he'd sold were.

disappointingly, generally only three ways, boiled, roast and mash

During childhood holidays at my great grandfather's in Cork I only ever used to get those gross boiled then partially oven dried things.

Always totally baffled me why you'd spend more effort to make a potato taste worse.

But I only remember breakfasts being potato-free. However, times have probably changed. Ireland has changed a lot.

mmmm potato farls dripping with butter

Sorry not sorry

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Extra potatoes will be ordered if we're out for dinner in a restaurant that serves potatoes.

Last time I was in Dublin was for a stag do and every restaurant we ate at had at least 3 different types of potato on every main course and hardly any other veg. Even the Irish lads there kept saying that they've got to eat 5 of their one a day.

I used to work in Jersey - allegedly the test of a true Jersey person was that they could taste a new potato and tell you which parish it had been grown in

But I only remember breakfasts being potato-free.

Maybe you weren't a favourite great grandson. Farls (Ireland) or Tattie Scones (Scotland) are very much a thing. A delicious thing.

And of course the waffley versatile Birds Eye Potato Waffle.

The English thing about the Irish was that they're thick. Now that Ireland has better living standards than us, plus an EU passport which gives them more freedom than us, the 'thick Paddy' jibe backfires. Maybe we can denigrate them for having swimming pools and helicopters?

There are over 5000 different varieties of potato, who knew?

who knew?

The Irish?

swimming pools and helicopters

Buying mine as soon as the famine reparations cheque clears

The potatoe trope is not routed in a current relationship between Irish people and spuds.

It is a jab in the ribs about the potato famine. Whether people realise this is the case or not is moot. It is only in the English common psyche because of the famine.

I often see sides of gratin, mash or chips on restaurant menus as sides to mains in the Uk and France.

Unconcious bias anyone?

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Now this is why we're here.

I'd submit that it predates the famine - cf John Gay's The Shepherd's Week (1714), quoted in Dr Johnson's dictionary:

Leek to the Welch, to Dutchmen butter’s dear,
Of Irish swains potatoe is the chear;
Oats for their feasts the Scottish shepherds grind,

Presumably it's rooted in the - colonialist - demand to export grains and other foodstuffs, leaving the Irish people dependent on the potato crop, but I'm not sure that the English psyche has much if any room for folk memories of Irish history - it's got little space for any more than two world wars, one world cup, and French antipathy to soap.

(And the stereotype of potato-lovers - a touch more attractive than spud-dependents - has certainly been enthusiastically embraced by a good proportion of the Irish I know.)

I'm not a racist. Some of my best meals are potatoes.

I'm conscious that I'm very close to "some of my best friends are Irish ..."