Something fishy

What the fuck is a kipper?, asks anyone under 40

The UK has apparently been stitched up like a herring that has been split, gutted, smoked and is now, to widespread horror, served up for breakfast.

Media attempts to stoke outrage by likening Britain to a kipper have foundered on whole generations not knowing what a kipper is and then, on discovery, being disgusted.

Lucy Parry, aged 28, said: “Sorry? Eating a fish? Before 7am?

“You consume a whole smoked fish then go to work? With that roiling in your belly? Breathing out fish fumes to everyone on the tube? If the EU wants to stop that I’m all fucking for it.”

32-year-old James Bates added: “Also, explain to me why I should give a shit about fishermen? Farmers I get, grudgingly. But I’m hazy on the moral imperative to save blokes who go out in boats.

“As a graphic designer I’m at risk of losing my job to AI. Will the fishermen rally round to save me by blockading offshore server farms with their boats? No, I don’t fucking think they will either.”

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[The "real" story".]

[The derivation of the phrase.]

Of Chocolate, Dame Edna and Birdsong

The gayest Xmas Robin in the world? [Australian Pink Robin (Petroica rodinogaster)]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Chocolate news: If it's not bad enough that one of Britain's favourite historic brands, chocolate manufacturer Cadbury, was taken over by Americans (the conglomerate Mondelez) in 2010 - now there are proposals in the air that Mondelez wants to take over the US brand Hershey's as well. They really shouldn't bother; their "chocolate" is vile, and tastes of sugary earwax. A Yank friend bought us a tin of Hershey's Kisses, and we thought they were so disgusting we threw the lot out and kept the tin!
• Sickest theme park ever? Thanks to a social media video that went viral [geddit?], the world gawped in amazement at the fact that Vietnam has a theme park dedicated to COVID-19!

• Hello, Possums! news: A sale of about 250 items from the personal collection of Barry Humphries will take place at Christie’s in London on 13th February 2025. The auction will include the diamante-encrusted Sydney Opera House spectacles [above] worn by Dame Edna Everage, which are estimated to sell for up to £1,500. We might place a bid!
• It it art? news: A city in Oregon, USA has issued a plea to whoever has been sticking "googly eyes" on its public artworks to stop. I think they look much better, to be honest.
• And finally: Many happy returns to Don Johnson who, scarily, is 75 years old today, and also to the lovely former Supreme Cindy Birdsong, who's 85! Here she is, sparkling away on not one, but two of the group's "post-Diana" hits:

Supremes - Up The Ladder to the Roof

Supremes - Stoned Love

And the weather? Mild again for the time of year - but too cloudy to see any Geminid meteors!

Sweet, grey post-war reward paste

Today's kids, in addition to their bloody phones, can pick any fucking flavour ice-cream they want. When you were a child these were the options:

Vanilla
To a generation, this was ice-cream. Bright yellow, simultaneously watery and oily, and in its soft-scoop version the invention of a young scientist named Margaret Thatcher, it tasted of nothing, was definingly bland, and was a top-echelon treat.

Strawberry
Pink version of above. The strawberry taste was sickly and disgusting but it was a sensation. You knew you’d had it. You’d boast about it at school.

Chocolate
Didn’t taste like chocolate but nothing chocolate-flavoured did back then. Drinking chocolate didn’t taste of chocolate. Chocolate biscuits didn’t taste of chocolate. Still, it was the right colour.

Neapolitan
Vanilla and strawberry and chocolate, all in one tub? Astonishing and only for special occasions, like your parents’ anniversary or a neighbour’s divorce. Allowed you to confirm they were all essentially identical, and to mix them together for a sweet, grey post-war reward paste.

Raspberry ripple
Blew minds. There are grown adults still reeling at their first encounter of vanilla ice-cream shot through – in picturesque ripples – with deep, flavoursome raspberry. How? Why? Was Thatcher involved again? Does eating this make me a scab? But God help me I cannot stop.

Mint choc chip
Unavailable to the general public for decades, only sold through specialists, this was your mum’s ice-cream of choice. Green, sophisticated, containing real chocolate, as adult as smoking in bed, as luxurious as Imperial Leather soap. An After Eight in frozen form, you imagined Princess Margaret would have one, in a bath. Too raunchy for the Queen.

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Buffet, anyone?

...none of which will (hopefully) be on the table at John-John's, where we are headed today for another mammoth "film day"...

Upsetting a natural balance

A family plans to violate all natural law by holding a barbecue this weekend even though it is September.

The Logan family have purchased sausages, burgers, charcoal and hickory wood for a barbecue neighbours have described as ‘spitting in the face of God’.

Friend Helen Archer said: “They think that just because it’s sunny, they can have a barbecue? Running contrary to all natural law? Upsetting a balance that may never be righted?

“Why don’t they go ahead and break out the Prosecco and deckchairs and ‘Tom’s Summer Playlist 23!’ to really incur the wrath of our Druidic forebears who will surely smite them with lightning? Oh, apparently they are.

“Barbecues are for summer. End of. They’re not weather-related, otherwise why would we have them in the pissing rain? They’re bringing down a curse upon us. If our house prices fall, it’s their fault.”

Tom Logan said: “What’s the problem? It’s a lovely day, not a cloud in the sky, and this is our way of saying ‘Hail Satan. Let these sausages burn like our flesh in your fires eternal.’”

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Nothing resembling a sensible sandwich

A man is unable to make a sandwich after discovering that the handcrafted sourdough loaf he bought is too weird a shape to cut into decent slices.

Julian Cook purchased the bread from an artisan micro-bakery, feeling obliged to go through with the purchase even when he was informed it cost £5.50.

Cook said: “It was horrifically expensive. But they’re an independent local business and I’m full of middle-class guilt, so I sucked it up, thinking I could make a nice sandwich with the rare cheese and amusingly named pickle I’d got from the farmers’ market.

“However, when I cut the end off I realised that part was only quarter of the size of a proper slice. I tried cutting a couple of decent slices from the middle of the loaf, but the only section that was a normal size turned out to be hiding a huge air bubble so there was no actual bread for me to put my filling on.

“I couldn’t even put bits from separate parts of the loaf together because its rough-hewn shape meant there weren’t two slices that would match up to make anything resembling a sensible sandwich.

“So I gave it to the birds and went out for a loaf of Warburtons. That’s real bread, whatever the Guardian food magazine tells you.”

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Sample the local cuisine

A Vegetarian sharing platter offered by a pub in Huddersfield consists entirely of chips, it has emerged.

Stephen and Lucy Malley, who were visiting the area from London, were dismayed to discover that the only meat-free option on the menu at the Kings Arms was 100 percent potato-based.

Stephen Malley said: “We’re not your typical fussy Southern types who expect something fancy – just some simple quinoa and chickpea fritters or kale tempura would have done.

“But when they brought out a heap of chips the size of a Jack Russell, we couldn’t believe our eyes. We could only stomach about seven each before we’d hit our carb limit for the day.

“It was must have been some kind of sick, Northern joke at our expense. They weren’t even sweet potato fries, for God’s sake!”

Landlord Bill McKay said: “I offered them a pickled egg in a bag of crisps and explained it was a Huddersfield delicacy, but they looked at me like I was mad.

“It’s the same the whole world over. If you’re not open-minded enough to step outside your comfort zone and sample the local cuisine, then you’re going to end up with chips.”

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Fit for eating?

[click to embiggen]

Have you purchased an avocado you thought would be perfect but is hard as a diamond when you open the packet? You’ve probably fallen for these other supermarket lies too.

Fresh living basil pot
Ooh, lovely, you think, a nice pot of basil that you can pop on the windowsill and water, plucking fresh green leaves off to add to dishes throughout the coming weeks. Sadly the reality is that it turns black and shrivelled within seven hours of arriving at your home, so you bin it, along with your dreams of freshly made pesto.

Ripen at home plums
Allowing these to ripen at home seems like an excellent idea. You’ll enjoy eating them at the weekend. However, the weekend comes and goes without these tough little bastards softening even slightly. Then you come home from work one day and they’re mush. What the fuck happened during the eight hours you were out? A total mystery.

Soft French baguette
As you take it from the shelf, you can imagine yourself at breakfast tomorrow, slathering butter on this pillowy soft bread. However, by the time you get to it the following morning it’s become so hard that you could use it to knock out an assailant if necessary. You put it back in the bread bin only to find it’s gone mouldy three hours later. They’d be rioting about this nonsense in Paris.

‘Fully loaded’ pizza
Looking through the cellophane window on the box, this pizza certainly looks like it has been abundantly topped with mozzarella slices, peppers, ham and mushrooms. But when you open it ready for cooking you discover that this is the only fully loaded part and the rest of it has a smear of tomato sauce and thin scattering of cheddar. You spread out the toppings, and it still looks sad.

‘Ripe and ready’ avocados
The biggest supermarket con of all. You don’t bother squeezing them to check their ripeness, as it is very clearly stated on the packaging that they are fit for eating immediately. However, when you attempt to cut one open at home, it’s harder than titanium and unlikely to be anywhere near ready this side of Christmas. It won’t stop you buying them again though. Idiot.

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Delicious, moreish nitrates

Studies warn that ultra-processed foods will take years off your life expectancy, to which Britons have responded by opening a packet of Hob-Nobs:

Bacon
For years you believed bacon came simply flayed directly from the pig, but apparently they do stuff like soaking it in salt and delicious, moreish nitrates. While a bacon sandwich may strip three months from you down the line, it gives you a hungover morning back. Who needs an extra three months doddering anyway?

White bread
Wheat, it seems, does not come in boring brown and tasty, sugary white varieties. But are you ready to start eating granary and end up as sanctimonious and delusional as Gwyneth Paltrow? No, life’s too short. Yours especially.

Crisps
Crisps are not found in nature, especially not in sweet chilli flavour. Nobody munching down a bag has any illusions. You could trade it for carrot sticks and hummus but hummus is pretty processed, so may as well stick with the old friend you’ve known will be the death of you for years than mess about.

Every ready meal
What’s the alternative? Cook for yourself? Be Nigel Slater and always have a bowl of asparagus hearts in olive oil you can prepare for a simple ten-minute supper? Bollocks to that. As long as you only have a microwave tikka masala after a 10k run, which you don’t, you’ll be fine.

Breakfast cereal
Nobody imagined Honey Nut Loops were harvested from the wild as is, but what’s the alternative? Bacon’s been ruled out, white bread’s been ruled out, crisps have been ruled out, so what are we meant to eat first thing? Fruit? Have you seen how much fucking about is involved in preparing a single melon?

Instant noodles
This idea that processed food is unhealthy must be bollocks because this is all you ate as a student and you were in the best shape of your life. Explain that, scientists. And you drank a bottle of Merrydown a night.

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Stick your avocados and Bulgar wheat where the sun doesn’t shine

There's a lot of concern over processed food nowadays but you grew up eating Angel Delight and you’re fine. So far. Here are some other old favourites to worry about:

Crispy Pancakes
A pancake full of minced beef or cheese and ham, covered in breadcrumbs and frozen? What lunatic invented this? It didn’t matter back in the 80s, as they were delicious, convenient and no one gave a shit that they were chock full of chemical colourings and stabilisers. They’d have told you to stick your avocados and Bulgar wheat where the sun doesn’t shine.

Pop-Tarts
A Pop-Tart has been through so many processes that it probably shouldn’t be legally classified as food anymore, and they contain an absolute fuck-load of sugar, corn syrup, palm oil and other worrying substances. However, the part of your brain that will forever remain an 80s kid still cannot resist that sweet, moreish smell wafting out of the toaster.

Angel Delight
What even is this? Add milk to coloured powder and it creates a claggy, oddly textured dessert in seconds. Every single flavour tasted vile, and yet that didn’t stop it being viewed as a sophisticated pudding that the whole family welcomed to the tea table with the same appreciation people today reserve for matcha and pomegranate panna cotta.

Billy Bear ham
Pork is pretty natural, right? Well, yes, but not after it has been mechanically reclaimed, mixed with pea protein, ascorbic acid and diphosphates – whatever they are – and reconstituted to look like a bear. A mental idea, when you think about it, but you were the envy of the playground when you had it in your sandwiches at school.

Turkey Twizzlers
Everyone loved a Turkey Twizzler, brimming with saturated fat, salt and sugar, and covered in a chemically enhanced coating. Then Jamie Oliver turned up and ruined them for everyone, ushering in the age of actually thinking about what we put in our bodies. Healthy perhaps, but after a childhood spent mainlining e-numbers, it feels a bit dull.

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Being a child of the '70s, I could cheerfully add to this list Bird's Luxury Trifle, Goblin Tinned Hamburgers, Vesta packet meals like Paella and Chow Mein, Birds Eye Arctic Roll, Yeoman powdered mash, Quosh, and so much, much more...

Turned by fancy Southern ways

A man from Batley has been given a substantial fine for cutting his bacon butty in a manner unbecoming of a Yorkshireman.

Plumber Norman Steele, 46, was today ordered to pay £600 with 120 hours of community service by a court in Halifax, with the judge describing it as "the worst case of a Yorkshireman getting funny ideas I have ever seen".

Steele’s crime was discovered by his wife when she found him in the kitchen, not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, delicately slicing a sandwich from corner to corner.

Wife Barbara said: “I felt sick. His normal butty is a huge doorstep drowned in ketchup and eaten whole, but this was poncey wholemeal bread arranged neatly on a plate. I could tell it wasn’t the first diagonal sandwich he’d made.

“In all our years of marriage he’s been hiding a creative, sensitive side. I should have realised his head had been turned by fancy Southern ways when he wanted mayonnaise on his chips instead of gravy.

“I feel like such a fool. I’ve moved in with my parents while the divorce goes through.”

Judge Mary Fisher said: “Mr. Steele exhibited a blatant disregard for the bluff, tiresome ways of God’s Own County.

“However I rejected a custodial sentence because I believe Mr Steele was genuine in his desire to make a fresh start in life and not move on to more serious crimes such as focaccia with olives.”

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Baffled

A woman has been found who has no specific dietary requirements, scientists have confirmed.

Researchers are baffled by Donna Sheridan, aged 34, who appears to be able to consume a standard range of human foodstuffs without making a big fucking song and dance about it.

Dietician Helen Archer said: “Donna is, amazingly, capable of perusing a menu without launching into an explanation of how she doesn’t eat dairy because humans can’t digest lactose and no other species consumes the milk of other mammals, even though no other species makes pizza either and we eat that.

“She also failed to tell any kind of anecdote about being allergic to nuts, how peanuts are actually a legume, or to be toying with veganism.

“Later in the meal, Donna neglected to discuss at length how gluten affects her digestion and how buckwheat bread is just as nice as real bread even though it looks and tastes like a house brick.

“Finally, we observed Donna not indignantly asking the waiter why the beef lasagne wasn’t available without the beef, before eschewing the jackfruit burger. We don’t know how she can exist, but we’re confident it can’t be recreated in laboratory conditions.”

Sheridan said: “I enjoy eating food. I know. Shameful.”

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Dish(es) of the Day?

Feeling hungry?

You soon won't be...

Yum, yum.

[click any pic to embiggen]

Turns out it’s fags

The crucial element of the southern European diet that keeps natives so attractively thin is not olive oil or leafy vegetables but endless cigarettes.

Proponents of the Mediterranean diet claim emulating Spanish and Italian consumption of legumes, seeds and fruit will help you get skinny, but researchers have found their ceaseless consumption of Marlboro Lights has more to do with it.

Dr Helen Archer explained: “Northern Europeans lusting after sexy, olive-skinned Mediterraneans in skimpy swimwear have always wondered what their secret is. Turns out it’s fags.

“We experimented with two groups. One who ate nothing but sardines and artichokes in olive oil. The other who ate whatever the fuck they wanted and smoked four packs a day.

“By week three, the smokers would slip effortlessly among the bathing beauties on a St Tropez beach, while the healthy eaters were more Margate than Montpellier.”

“Turns out it’s not visiting the vegetable aisle but going to the counter that sells the scratchcards that does the trick. You die early, sure, but you die thin so who gives a shit?”

Sophie Rodriguez of Seville said: “Duh. All of my friends back home eat nothing but kebabs. The difference is they eat them between inhaling Camel Blues.”

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Gazing hungrily at a cylinder of meat

A woman was left disappointed when she opted to take a man home for a shag instead of ending her night with a doner kebab.

After waking up with a splitting headache, Lucy Parry wished she had found a half-eaten, meat-stuffed pitta in her bed, rather than an unattractive stranger.

Parry said: “I find clubbing atrocious now I’m in my 30s. The most enjoyable part of an evening out is having a chat with the guy behind the counter at Gangsta Wrap while eating some delicious shavings of worryingly low-quality lamb smothered in chilli sauce.

“A kebab is a much more fulfilling and wholesome experience than hooking up with a guy wearing too much aftershave for ten minutes of drunken pumping and an awkward conversation in the morning.

“Gazing hungrily at the tall, bronzed cylinder of meat as it seductively revolves is honestly more exciting to me than any Magic Mike-style hunk could ever be. And you never get those down Crackers in Cinderford anyway.

“Sadly I feel I can’t have a kebab for breakfast instead. I may have just spent the night with an ugly bloke I picked up in a nasty club, but I still have some standards.”

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Haute cuisine

A woman has scoured her recipe books for a dish that requires a splash of red wine just so she has an excuse to drink the rest of the bottle.

Lauren Hewitt found a spaghetti bolognese that needed 50ml of red wine, knowing that it would allow her to neck the other 700ml and get pissed on a week night.

Hewitt said: “An authentic spaghetti bolognese requires red wine to intensify the flavour, so it was vital that I spent 10 minutes in Tesco picking out a bottle I really like.

“Yes, I substituted the rest of the complicated ingredients for a jar of Dolmio and a tub of cheap mince, but that’s why the wine is necessary. To elevate it. Nigella would do the same.

“And it’s nice to have a glass while I’m cooking, and then two glasses while I’m eating, and then polish the bottle off in front of the telly after. Otherwise it would just go to waste, despite the fact it’s a screw top and would actually keep for several days.

“Anyway it could be worse. I nearly decided to make penne alla vodka.”

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Hic!

Every time you see me I'm in my sin

It's Boxing Day, "the morning after", the day when all the leftovers from the huge Xmas dinner get used for their true purpose of existence - Bubble'n'Squeak.* With fried eggs (and possibly bacon, too)!

And, invitably, more booze...

...we know a song about that, don't we, dear chums?

Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five - What's the Use of Getting Sober?

Clink, clink, sweeties! Hair of the dog...

[* Read my blog post from 2015 for more traditional British dishes that are largely a complete mystery across the pond...]

Stealth tactics

My dish is on the left. [click to embiggen]

You're at an event and there’s a buffet. How can you beat everyone else to hog the best stuff? Use these tactics:

Focus

Often a buffet follows some boring speech about how much we’ll all miss the deceased or whatever. Ignore that. Scope what’s there, plan your route, be ready for your turn on the tongs. Preparation is the difference between stuffed mushrooms and chicken Kievs on your plate.

Appetite

If you’re serious about being the "buffet GOAT," you’ve got to go in hungry. But not too hungry or you’ll make bad decisions and end up with a plate full of crisps. Drop a Lion bar around 30 minutes before kick off and you’ll be primed to bring the pain to those chilli tiger prawns.

Vision

When it comes to fitting three days food on a nine-inch plate, architectural vision is key. A solid base of potato wedges, a finger-sandwich house of cards, chocolate truffles adeptly balanced on the slopes of a black rice salad. It can be beautiful.

Speed

Buffets favour the guzzler. Once you’ve loaded up get those mozzarella sticks rammed down your throat double-time so you can get your arse back in line, still chewing, for seconds. They might even still be bringing stuff out if they’re lazy, disorganised scum.

Ruthlessness

There’s one slice of gluten-free carrot cake left and the coeliac behind’s been on about it all queue. What do you do? Take it. You’re not here to make friends. Now kick that old man’s cane out from under him and knock that child’s head in the blinis to claim the last chicken satay skewers.

Disguise

Everyone gets turned away by self-appointed buffet bouncers eventually. Simply tail, blackjack and swap clothes with a member of serving staff and clear the buffet into the back of your waiting car. Buffet’s more important than your brother’s wedding anyway.

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Feeling hungry..?

...not now you're not!

What it takes

A moron who was uninterested in getting the Covid vaccine to protect himself and others has had a change of heart after being offered a free double cheeseburger.

Dimwit Joe Turner, 26, said the lifesaving properties of the vaccine had failed to incentivise him into not being hospitalised or dying.

However, a new government scheme offering free takeaways and Uber rides to vaccine recipients prompted a radical change of his position.

Turner said: “When I was first offered the vaccine I didn’t really see the point in it. I’m young and reasonably healthy, so I didn’t understand what was in it for me.

“But then a mate told me the government would give me a free McDonald’s if I got it – so I’m starting to come round to the idea.”

Fellow idiot Roy Hobbs was also previously unenthused by the idea of vaccination.

He said: “I’d seen a bunch of scary stuff on Facebook about it having a microchip or messing about with your DNA – so I was pretty worried about putting that stuff in my body, to be honest.

“But then I saw I could get a free kebab so I booked my first jab for later this week.”

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The "real" story.