A Different View
Nostalgia will always sell – particularly for those with a sweet tooth
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
There’s an Irish guy about to make his fortune exporting Tayto to Australia at a time that Walker’s are looking to increase their share of the Irish market by having Gary Lineker front a campaign to come up with bizarre new flavours.
Proof, yet again, that we only really miss those goods that are quintessentially Irish when either they’re gone or we’re gone.
Eamon Eastwood isn’t stopping at Tayto either – TK red lemonade, Club orange, Barry’s tea and Batchelor’s beans are all on their way to over 600 stores Down Under, ensuring more than a little taste of home for our brightest and best on the other side of the world.
The only surprise is that this has only been done on a limited scale in the past, because we Irish have been exporting the weirdest things from home for as long as we’ve had air and sea travel.
There’s been many the highly trained drugs sniffing dog who has gone off his head at an airport carousel … only to discover that the drugs consignment just arriving in from Shannon was in fact a couple of pounds of Denny’s sausages wrapped up in tee-shirts.
There has never been an emigrant or middle-aged holidaymaker who left without a couple of boxes of Barry’s – as though Cork, as opposed to Ceylon, was the tea-growing capital of the world.
The Rebels, of course, have taken this sense of ownership to a higher level, with their own stouts – Murphy’s and Beamish – their own tea and their own newspaper, de Paper.
They swear by tripe and drisheen, two food products designed to turn the eater’s own innards by feeding him the stomach of a dead cow, pig or sheep.
They also love to wash that down with an oul’ can of Tanora, that sickly sweet tack that makes Coke seem like a health drink.
The manufacturers tried it on the rest of the world but only in Cork did it gain traction – although there were rumours that it was highly prized in border counties where they laundered it and resold it as dodgy diesel.
Elsewhere, there’s a Dublin dish called coddle which is essentially a stew with boiled sausages, but it looks like something that you fished out of the Liffey in a bucket.
And let’s not forget Waterford’s efforts to patent its blaa, as though the rest of us never had ready access to a thousand different varieties of potato dishes.
But we’re now talking about a whole new food tradition – the one that makes our ex-pats homesick for Tayto, a product that looked to have had its day but which now has its own theme park up in Ashbourne.
Not that the animals would appear too thrilled about life in the Tayto kingdom – inspectors from the National Parks and Wildlife Service recently found evidence of “inappropriate breeding” and “overweight” racoons, leading to a ban on the facility from adding animals to its zoo for the second year in a row.
Things, it must be said, are much better for the meerkats who had problems during a previous inspection – although they might need to watch out in case the current Walker’s campaign votes them in as the basis of a new flavour.
But whatever about the animals or the park itself, it’s the original product first dreamed up by Joe ‘Spud’ Murphy back in the 1950s – and like a taste of home, it only takes a glimpse of the famous red packet to make us all nostalgic for another time.
We remember them like Sherberts or penny bars, Curlywurlys or Highland Toffee, Wagon Wheels, gobstoppers, Blackjacks or Love Hearts – not necessarily because we love them but because they bring us back to the world of our youth.
Because they are part of what we are.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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