Pod Insights The Blindboy Podcast What pulling our pants around our ankles can tell us about structuralist theory and oral storytelling About this episode A chance encounter with a childhood friend and his nickname leads me to ponder the nature of oral storyteling and Irish mythology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript 11,208 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:07 Blindboy Boatclub? Cry wit Nile of the Nine hostages, you sausageless costigans. Welcome to the Blown By Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode of this podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. We're nestled in the comforting breast of autumn here in Limerick City. The leaves are going all rusty. There's a healthy wind and a freshness to the air. I have a thirst for layers underneath my jacket. And I was walking up Henry Street, Henry Street, the other day. Lovely powerful breeze coming up Henry Street up from the river.
1:50 Blindboy Boatclub? And I bumped into, bumped into someone I hadn't seen in.
1:56 Blindboy Boatclub? Fucking fifteen, sixteen years, maybe longer. Fella I went to school with, who would have been in my class. His name's Jerry Soft. And it was lovely to see Jerry Soft, I hadn't seen him in fucking years. And turns out Jerry listens to my podcast. And he said to me, I was listening to your podcast a couple of weeks ago when you were talking about your time back in school, not last week's podcast, but the week, two weeks ago, I think, I spoke about. Being in secondary school and the class that I was in. And Jerry Soft, he was just like, fuck it. Yeah, I'd forgotten about all of that. I'd forgotten about the different characters in school and all of that stuff.
2:41 Blindboy Boatclub? And it really brought me back. And then he said to me, cause like when I, when I fucking seen him, and we're middle aged men now. When I seen him and I hadn't seen him in sixteen, seventeen years. I went, oh my God, Jerry Soft, Jerry Soft.
2:58 Blindboy Boatclub? So he said to me.
3:01 Blindboy Boatclub? I don't know why I'm called Jerry Soft. Do you remember from back in school, why the fuck I was called Jerry Soft? Because I got the impression that he didn't like it, that at the time in school. He didn't like the nickname Jerry Soft, that this was embarrassing. And even now, as, as middle aged men, that I'm still calling him fucking Jerry Soft. So he wanted to know, he was asking me, why, why did you all call me Jerry Soft? Why was that my name? And he also said, he said, the one person who's gonna fucking know is me because of my mad memory. And I loved being asked that question.
3:41 Blindboy Boatclub? Eh, because when I saw Jerry Soft, I'll be honest, I'm like, oh, fuck, is this gonna be small talk? Is this gonna be small talk? Or is the conversation gonna be something of substance that I can enjoy? And it wasn't small talk. It's like, why, why am I called Jerry Soft? And I relax in those situations, cause now I have something to speak about. And I was thinking, yeah, why the fuck are you called Jerry Soft? Why did we call you that back in school, Jerry Soft? And I felt that wonderful feeling of flow come over me.
4:15 Blindboy Boatclub? It felt like cleaning out the attic and finding a beautiful tie from childhood that you'd forgotten about. And all the little moments of memories that you had with that tie come back. And I said to him, Jerry.
4:30 Blindboy Boatclub? Well, I had to start by talking about Claude Levi Strauss. So Claude Levi Strauss was this. He was a structuralist, he was an anthropologist, right? But his thing was structuralism, structuralism.
4:43 Blindboy Boatclub? Strauss's big idea, when he was looking at like human societies or human folklore, was that humans derive structural meaning through oppositions, binary oppositions.
4:59 Blindboy Boatclub? Raw versus cooked, life versus death, night versus day. That under the structural sense, humans derive meaning, not a thing. A thing's meaning doesn't come from itself, but it comes from what it isn't. The first thing I said to him, I said, Jerry. As far as I can remember, we didn't call you Jerry. You weren't called Jerry Soft because you were soft. Because you seem to be called soft meant that you were weak, meant that you were a coward. I said, no one ever called you Jerry Soft as an insult, you were just Jerry Soft. But I said, here's the thing, remember Jerry Hard? And his nostrils flared like he was smelling a silent fart.
5:42 Blindboy Boatclub? There were two Jerries, we had two Jerries in the fucking classroom. And for, for second year and third year, we started to call him Jerry, Jerry Soft in, in, in fifth year.
5:56 Blindboy Boatclub? In, in fucking, there was no fourth year, by the way. Well, fourth year was transition year, which I wasn't allowed to, because I was too bold. So you went from third year straight to fifth year. But anyway. We had two Jerries in the fucking classroom. And there weren't that many people in the classroom. There was maybe fifteen, sixteen. So it was actually really annoying that there were two Jerries. It was, you'd end up calling them by their full names, or you'd chant Jar, or you'd chant Jerry. It was a difficult thing. But I said to him, what about Jerry Hard? You remember Jerry Hard? And he's like, yeah, I do remember Jerry Hard. I said, that's why you're Jerry Soft. It's not that you were soft, it's we had Jerry Hard. So because he became Jerry Hard, you then had to become Jerry Soft.
6:41 Blindboy Boatclub? Not that you were soft, it's that he was Jerry Hard. Because we had Jerry Hard and Jerry Soft back in school. And I said to him, do you remember why Jerry Hard became Jerry Hard? And, and just taking it back to the Claude Levi Strauss, that, that there is pure fucking structuralism. Right there. Jerry Soft did nothing other than exist. All right, he was easygoing, he was sound, he was, but, but he had respect, he was nice. But because Jerry Hard, there was two Jerries, that was the issue. Jerry Hard did some shit that made him be called Jerry Hard. So then Jerry, other Jerry had to become Jerry Soft. Binary opposition. His nickname is purely structural, right?
7:24 Blindboy Boatclub? He didn't earn it, it doesn't describe him as being soft. No meaning is derived from Jerry Soft's behaviour. It's oppositional, it's, it's in binary opposition to Jerry Hard. Jerry Hard was Jerry Hard because he did some hard shit. But then I had to explain why Jerry Hard was called Jerry Hard. Now I'd forgotten about all this stuff, but it was flowing back to me quite wonderful. And so Jerry Hard was called Jerry Hard. Because in fiftier, he got into a feud with a fella called Polly Pants. Now I can't, I couldn't explain Jerry Hard without explaining Polly Pants, or why Polly Pants was called Polly Pants.
8:09 Blindboy Boatclub? So we're in fiftier, so we're like fifteen, sixteen. But Polly Pants, who was a lunatic,
8:17 Blindboy Boatclub? got his name when we were like ten, ten years of age.
8:25 Blindboy Boatclub? At the age where you start talking to girls and it's a little bit nervous, the little blossomings of, of, I won't even say being interested in girls, but when girls become something that you're nervous around, when, when, when lads start wearing gel in their hair, 10 years of age, there was one summer, this would have been the 90s, there was one summer, it was very fucking hot.
8:52 Blindboy Boatclub? Man United, I know nothing about soccer, but I do know that this year, Man United were very popular and Limerick had a Man United shop. So anyway, this one summer, when it was very hot, we're 10 years of age, we're kids, lots of people were wearing full kits, Man United fucking top, jersey, Man United shorts, okay? Polly Pants, who was a lunatic of a young fella, created an endemic of pulling people's pants down. And because people were wearing, like, young fellas were wearing full kits, they wouldn't be wearing underpants, so when Polly Pants pulled your fucking shorts down, your dick was out.
9:35 Blindboy Boatclub? Now, when you're nine or 10 and you start putting gel in your hair, that's when you get integration, integration between the fucking sexes, right? Up to that point, when you're a child, your friends are only little lads, and then the girls are separate groups, but at nine or 10 in the summer, that's when there was a small bit of integration, when the lads would, would, you'd be in a field, you'd be in a fucking field, the lads are over at this site and the girls are over at that site, and you're still kind of scared to get together, and there's always one brave lad who kind of walks into the middle or walks over to the girls to speak to the girls, and Polly Pants used to target him.
10:20 Blindboy Boatclub? And he did it about five times over the summer.
10:26 Blindboy Boatclub? That when a when a poor fucking young fella would go over and talk to the girls, Polly Pants would run up behind him and rip his shorts down and then there's his willy. Everyone is confronted with his willy. I saw so many. It was a summer of children's mickeys. There's no other way to say it. It was a pandemic. It was awful. It was fucking awful. Poor young fella's gone up talking to the girls for the first time and Polly Pants runs up from behind, rips his fucking shorts down and it's over. That's it. It's over now. There's no comeback. And I'm so sorry for laughing, but it was incredibly funny that just the, the, the visual comedy of us.
11:12 Blindboy Boatclub? You see, nudity isn't funny. But, but
11:21 Blindboy Boatclub? there's no way to be dignified when you're, when you're wearing a t-shirt. When you're wearing a t-shirt, when you're wearing a t-shirt. And then it's just your dick and arse out.
11:36 Blindboy Boatclub? You look like Donald Duck.
11:39 Blindboy Boatclub? You can't. There, there is no way for a man or a boy. If you're wearing a t-shirt, right, and you're nude from the waist down, it's instantly foolish. It's instantly foolish. Nude, not naked body, who cares? Naked from the waist down with a t-shirt. It's, it's either Donald Duck or toddler who won't go to bed. Instant hilarity, even when you feel sorry for the person. That was the thing. You'd feel mortified for the young fella who was having it done to him. You couldn't stop laughing. It was too funny. Polly Pants was an expert. He, he was like a ninja. He'd just appear from nowhere and just
12:24 Blindboy Boatclub? pants down, nothing he can.
12:27 Blindboy Boatclub? Really good at this and it was fucking awful. It was look like, Jesus Christ, I never got done. I didn't get caught with it, but he did it to about six fellas and he was hard as well. He would fight, so nobody would stop him. People protested, but no one really like gave him a beating to go stop pulling people's pants down. So that summer you lived with the threat, the threat of if Polly Pants is around and he sees, just fucking watch it because he's gonna pull your fucking pants down and your dick is out in front of the girls and that's just how it's gonna be. So everyone, people had to stop wearing shorts that summer straight.
13:10 Blindboy Boatclub? That was the thing and because I remember it being really hot and then having to wear jeans with a belt and being really fucking pissed off because I wanted to wear my shorts, but it's like no fucking way. So I put an extra hole in my belt to make it real tight so that if Polly Pants tried it, it just wasn't happening. So he got the name Polly Pants when we were fucking 10 from doing that one summer. And pulling pants down was a thing. That's what young lads do, like that was a thing, pulling pants down.
13:41 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm sorry, I just can't, I'm thinking back to every time it was really funny. Whenever it would happen, it was fucking genuinely funny, but like he'd do it to people.
13:57 Blindboy Boatclub? Boss stops in the shop, speaking to people's maz. But usually when kids would pull another lad's pants down, they wouldn't go the full shebang. But this fellow, he was operating under his own rules and it was terrifying. So he got called Polly Pants for that. And I was saying all this to Jerry Soft on the fucking street in Henry Street, but also I couldn't tell him about Polly Pants without talking about a fella called Granny. I couldn't fully contextualize Polly Pants. There was layers to it. That was the first, the first summer that I put my tongue into a girl's mouth was the summer of Polly Pants and I must have been 10 maybe.
14:39 Blindboy Boatclub? It was this memory that reminded me actually of Polly Pants, so.
14:46 Blindboy Boatclub? So I was ten and like I said, it's the first time that the group of boys are talking to the group of girls and all this shit and then theirs start to happen. And then like your children like so I didn't know what shifting was. Shifting is when you kiss a girl with tongues. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was something I wanted to do. It wasn't something I thought about. It didn't make sense to me. But usually there was always some girl or some boy who had older siblings and they were the ones who said ye have to shift, two ye have to shift. No, it would catch a boy, kiss a boy. That was it. So we'd managed to ingratiate ourselves with the group of girls and there was interaction,
15:31 Blindboy Boatclub? mutual interaction between both gangs in a field, really, really sunny. And one of the, they said the lads had to run away and then one of the girls had to chase you and she would catch you and then you had to kiss with tongues. And that happened to me. A girl caught me and then it was like, you have to go and fucking kiss with tongues now. I was a bit young to be honest, because I don't think I wanted to do it. I didn't understand the point of it. I didn't understand the, and literally when it was said to me, you have to shift. What does that mean? You put your tongues into each other's mouths and move them around. I learned about it there and then, but I wasn't gonna say no
16:14 Blindboy Boatclub? because if you say no, you were gonna get called a frigid. So I had to do it anyway. And then usually, you see, the girl and the boy have to, they go somewhere into a bush behind a wall and then shift. But my memory was, we couldn't do that because of fucking pulley pants. Pulley pants was there. So none of the girls were picking pulley pants. Like, you have to make a choice. You can either be the fella who's excellent at pulling other boys pants down, or you can kiss a girl. You can't have both. And I think he was a bit jealous of that. So if two, if two people were shifting, pulley pants is running straight up and pulling
16:57 Blindboy Boatclub? down the boy's pants to see if he was getting a spanty or not. So I remember, my memory was having to go off with this girl to, to, to put my tongue into her mouth somewhere. We couldn't do it behind a wall, we couldn't do it into a bush. We had to go into these public toilets that had a door that you could lock. And I remember, I remember it being mad. What the fuck am I doing with my tongue in someone's mouth? But then I also remember being distracted by how tight my trousers were. And my trousers were tight because fucking pulley pants. I had to tighten the trousers extra tight because of the pulley pants threat. Now, I was saying all this to Jerry Soft, but the thing is, the girl
17:40 Blindboy Boatclub? whose, whose mouth my tongue was in, she had an older brother and his nickname was Granny. Now, this was actually highly relevant to the Jerry Hard, Jerry Soft thing, and I'll tell you why. So her older brother was Granny. I, I didn't know Granny. He was significantly older, like maybe 15 years older. My brothers knew Granny. And my brothers used to talk about, so this, her brother was so, he used to love giving people headbutts. Now, this is probably going back to the late 1970s, because this, this, this Granny story is
18:22 Blindboy Boatclub? from my brothers. Her brother used to headbutt people so much and was so, was so hungry for headbutt. He was like the pulley pants of headbutts back in the 70s. So this fella, Granny, if he was around, he might just headbutt you because he was so curious about headbutting. He was so prolific a headbutter that in the area of Limerick in the late 70s, headbutting someone became known as a Granny. And I knew this because my older brothers would talk about it. They'd say, oh, that fella got grannied, or he threw a granny at him. Imagine headbutting people so much that the name of a headbutt changes to become
19:05 Blindboy Boatclub? your nickname. Now, I don't know why he was called Granny, that's the thing. But a headbutt, for a while, was called a Granny, because this young fella was headbutting so many people. And what I loved about that was... That's almost not structuralism, that's called an eponym, an eponym. Where a personal name becomes the label for the thing. Like, like a sandwich, sandwich. The fuck is a sandwich? Well, it's, it's a piece of bread with shit in the middle. That's named after the Earl of Sandwich. Or Tobycott, Tobycott. So up in Mayo in the eighteen eighties, there was an English landlord called Charles Bycott,
19:49 Blindboy Boatclub? an absolute fucking prick. A colonizer and exploiter would exploit people through rent. And then the Irish got together up in Mayo, like the Land League, and said, everyone ignored this man, this landlord that's making everyone's lives miserable. Refuse to work for him. Refuse to serve him in shops. Ostracise him completely. A collective effort to ostracise this person and get him where it hurts, in the pocket. It's nonviolent, they can't arrest you for it, let's all do that. And that became known as a Bycott, a Bycott. Because what the fuck does Bycott mean? It's, it's named after Charles Bycott. So in the late seventies, in Limerick amongst my brothers and their friends,
20:33 Blindboy Boatclub? a headbutt was a granny, because this young fella Granny was so prolific a headbutter. But anyway, fast, fast forward to the nineties and now my tongue is in his sister's mouth and my pants are up really fucking tight with a belt on because of Polly Pants, who might jump in at any moment, pull my pants down and then my dick is out. Now, I was delivering all of this at Jerry Soft in the street. And then I went, Jerry, what, what does this have to do with Jerry Hard? So now we're back in, in, in fifth year in school, in my class. And there's two Jerries in the class, we're all fifteen, sixteen. And like I said, there's Jerry Soft and Jerry Hard.
21:15 Blindboy Boatclub? Jerry Hard got the name Jerry Hard because by the time we were teenagers, Polly Pants was a fucking lunatic. He wasn't a bad person, but he was hard as nails, really, really hard. And he'd had this feud with Jerry Hard, who wasn't Jerry Hard yet, he was just Jerry.
21:37 Blindboy Boatclub? And Polly Pants, his dad was a plumber. So one day when we were about fifteen or sixteen, Polly Pants started bringing a spanner into school, like this long, ten inch metal fucking spanner. And it was so, it was so strange that it was, it was intimidating. It wasn't a knife, it wasn't a weapon, it's a fucking spanner. And that made it way more, that was the thing with, with Limerick. When people were saying stab city, stab city, this, oh, Limerick was full of knives. The person who had a knife was not a threat whatsoever.
22:22 Blindboy Boatclub? The person who would carry a knife with them was never, ever gonna use it. They were showing off. Because you see, the person who has a knife is aware that they could get caught with that. And if you get caught with a knife, it's a definite weapon and you get in trouble. So the type, type of people who were actually capable of using a weapon would never have a knife with them. Like, I used to have a knife when I was a teenager. Like, your friend would, would, your friend might go off to Spain, and if a friend came back from Spain, they could get like butterfly knives and flick, flick knives. And I had, I had a butterfly knife that I used to carry around with me. And I wouldn't show it off. I wouldn't use it as, as a weapon. I wouldn't try and intimidate anyone with it. It was, I have a fucking cool knife, do you wanna see it?
23:07 Blindboy Boatclub? Do you wanna see this cold butterfly? It was a tie, it was a tie. I'm not advocating the carrying of knives here, but I'm trying to illustrate. I was the type of utterly harmless young fella that happened to have a butterfly knife for crack, even though that was illegal and that was probably part of it. The scarcity of a butterfly knife. And that was a prized possession. That butterfly knife, actually, how did I get? I got that off a fella whose father used to repair house alarms. And his dad opened up a house alarm box once, and that butterfly knife was in there, so he gave it to his son. And then I bought that off his son. And his son didn't have a nickname, but his son, his son spent two years in school lying
23:52 Blindboy Boatclub? about having a girlfriend who was a hair model, which was a brilliant lie because... He was thinking, if I, if I say that my girlfriend is a model model, no one's gonna believe that. But if I say she's a hair model, then people might believe it. And there was no phones, there was no pictures, there was nothing. So if someone said they had a girlfriend that you haven't met in a different part of the city, you just had to, you had to go along with it. And he, he bizarrely didn't get a nickname for that behaviour. But anyway, the people who might actually use a weapon would have a tool with them, because they're thinking, if I get caught with a spanner, then I just tell the fucking policeman when he searches me, oh yeah, my dad's a plumber. Of course I have a spanner. My dad is a plumber.
24:35 Blindboy Boatclub? And that's what made the choice, Polly Pants' choice, to start coming into school with a fucking spanner. Cause he was gonna hit Jerry with it, cause of their, their feud. Like they were, they were fighting frequently. And when he started bringing the spanner, we all were like, oh fuck, he's actually gonna do something with this. But he wasn't. It was just a very clever move out of Polly Pants, where the psychological impact of the spanner was like, any cunt with a spanner is a lunatic, he's actually gonna use it. But then Jerry, his dad was a, I think he was a carpenter or a joiner or something.
25:17 Blindboy Boatclub? Jerry then started bringing, he started bringing a chisel, a big, long chisel, a sharp chisel into school. Now, nothing was happening. Do you know what? It was a bit like, they didn't, yeah, it was a bit like mutually assured destruction. So during the Cold War, you had the arms race. So you had the Soviet Union was getting all of these nuclear weapons, and the United States was getting all of these nuclear weapons. And it was this arms race of nuclear dominance, until eventually, they had so many nuclear weapons on both sides, that it made nuclear conflict almost impossible. Mutually assured
25:58 Blindboy Boatclub? destruction. If you fire your nuclear bombs at us, we'll fire all of ours, and then everything's gone, so there's no point. And the, when Jerry Hard brought in that fucking chisel.
26:13 Blindboy Boatclub? And Polly Pants had the spanner. There was no fight. They couldn't fight because if they did fight, it meant a chisel and a fucking spanner in the schoolyard. And with all due respect, that wasn't gonna happen. It was a show. And that's how Jerry Hard got the name Jerry Hard. And we weren't even thinking about the other Jerry. Weren't even thinking about it, but it would just naturally happen. The months passed and you walk into the classroom and you go, is Jerry around? Do you see Jerry anywhere? And then someone goes, Jerry Hard? No, no, Jerry Soft. And it, what I love is it perfectly illustrates Claude Levi Strauss's structuralist theory that we need these binary oppositions to form meaning.
26:57 Blindboy Boatclub? Like an analog watch. A, a watch that's, a watch with a hand, right? That moves. We call that now an analog watch. But we only called it an analog watch because digital watches became a thing. Digital watches. So therefore the watches that aren't digital become analog watches. But do you think people were calling analog watches analog watches before digital watches? No, there was just watches. There was just Jerry's. A landline. What the fuck is a landline? Well, mobile phones became a thing, a phone that you, that was mobile. So now all of a sudden you have to call the phone that's at home a landline. Before mobile phones, it was just phones. Smartphones. You know, we all use smartphones now, like your fucking iPhone, whatever.
27:42 Blindboy Boatclub? Whatever has apps on it is a smartphone. Before the iPhone, it was, it was then, it was just fucking phones. And now if someone has a phone that is not a smartphone, you call it a brick phone, a brick phone or even a burner phone. So I said, don't be worrying, like, we weren't, no one was taking the piss out of you. You were just called Jerry Soft because he became Jerry Hard and there was two Jerry's. And that's just what happens. No one thought, actually thought you were soft. You just weren't coming into school with a chisel. And then, then Jerry Soft laughed. His middle aged man laugh. And then he said, well, what if I'd have come into school with a chainsaw? What would I have been then? And then I said, I thought about it. Do you know, he'd have been Jerry Hard Hard.
28:28 Blindboy Boatclub? That's what that would have been the rules. If he'd have outharded Gerry Hard, he'd have become Gerry Hard Hard. So there would have been Gerry Hard and Gerry Hard Hard. But what I really enjoyed about the chat was it was an example of pure oral culture, oral storytelling. Gerry can't go to the library or go onto Google and ask, why was I called Gerry Soft? And no one ever wrote it down. He had to find the person who would remember me, Mr Autism, and would recount it to him. But when I'm recounting it to him, I can't consult any texts.
29:09 Blindboy Boatclub? Nothing's written down, so I have to recall from, from memory and explain it orally. But I can't just explain, I can't just explain Gerry Soft without explaining Gerry Hard. And then I'm talking about pulley pants and now I'm back in the 1970s, talking about fucking granny before I was born. And even the little detour about my butterfly knife, where I couldn't speak about the context of this, this weapon without almost giving it a legendary status and a story behind it. This legendary weapon was found inside a house alarm and was given to me by a boy who lied about having a hair model for a girlfriend.
29:49 Blindboy Boatclub? And it, it reminded me of Irish mythology, Irish, pre-writing oral Irish mythology. And what I mean by that is it's a, it's a form of storytelling called the genealogy of names. In fact, there's a 14th century tract manuscript called The Fitness of Names, which is 300 Irish nicknames from the 1500s and, and the stories of how those nicknames came about. Actually, this is a big area, so let's have a little Ocarina pause before I progress into this. Okay, I, I don't have an Ocarina this, this week. Let's not get into why I don't have an Ocarina. What have I got?
30:33 Blindboy Boatclub? Two Korean chopsticks. We've got a lovely little Korean restaurant in Limerick now called Vico Vico. So here are two Korean chopsticks. I'm going to hit them off each other. You're going to hear an advert for something, all right? Lovely.
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34:52 Blindboy Boatclub? Lovely snap on that.
34:55 Blindboy Boatclub? That makes me want to go back doing my Twitch streams.
35:04 Blindboy Boatclub? That was the Korean chopstick pause there. You would have heard an advert for some shh. All right, support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. Does this podcast bring you solace, mirth, merriment, distraction? Whatever the fuck reason that you're listening to this podcast for. Please be aware that this is my full time job. This is how I earn a living. I'm recording this right now in my little wonderful acoustically treated studio that I had built specifically to record this podcast. And this was paid for by listeners who fund this podcast.
35:48 Blindboy Boatclub? This podcast is funded by listeners for listeners. Because of that, it's my full time job. I get to, I get to have the time and space to write and research and prepare and deliver a monologue podcast each week, which is, that's a lot of work. It's not, I speak to a guest each week. I deliver a monologue podcast each week that I write. But I have the time and space to do that because this is listener funded and this is my full time job. So thank you, everybody who was a patron, right? All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it.
36:29 Blindboy Boatclub? And if you can't afford this, if you don't have that money, absolutely fine. Listen for free, listen for free. Cause the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast I get to earn a living. Wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. So I'm stupidly busy this week. I'm too busy. I made foolish decisions. I booked three gigs in the space of eight days and I really should not have done that. I should have had more empathy for my future self, but they were amazing gigs and I love doing them. Cause I do, I love getting out and seeing ye.
37:12 Blindboy Boatclub? I just fucking love doing it. And in an act of not having much empathy for my future self.
37:21 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm thinking of doing a Blind by Podcast Festival in Limerick. This is a thing I'm tying around with. Don't know when, but it's something I wanna do. And I wanna pick the podcasts that I would have at this festival. So if just, if there's any, if I was to do a fucking podcast festival, what podcasters would you like to see at this festival? Give me a DM on Instagram, Blind by Boat Club. Upcoming gigs, I only have one more gig this year, actually. Um, my last gig of, of 2025 is in Meath, in Meath,
38:02 Blindboy Boatclub? Trim in Meath on Halloween night, which is a month away. Well, it's not, it's 30 days away. Fucking Halloween night, I'm playing at the Polka Festival, a Halloween festival. And I'm gonna try and get a guest, I'm gonna try and get a guest to know the thing or two about Halloween and the folklore of it. There's very few tickets, this is a small little gig, very few tickets for this gig. But if you wanna have a bit of crack on Halloween night, come to Meath to the Polka Festival, 31st of October. And then I don't have any more gigs until 2026. I kinda try and avoid gigging in December for sure, because of the threat of Christmas parties.
38:49 Blindboy Boatclub? Sometimes people come to a live podcast as part of an office Christmas party. And I know they think they're, they're doing something nice and bringing their office to a live podcast. It's, it's disastrous because what happens is I'm there doing a live podcast, which is me and, and somebody else speaking on stage. And all of a sudden now there's 10 people from an office, two people like my podcast, and eight people are on a night out and they wanna talk to each other. So Christmas parties are so destructive to a live event, especially a live podcast. I kinda don't gig in December, just in case. So my next gig really is fucking.
39:32 Blindboy Boatclub? January there, the 23rd of January, I'm in Waterford in the Theatre Royal. Lovely Waterford, can't wait to get back there. February 26, back in Vicar Street on the 4th of February. Then Belfast on the 12th of February, I'm up in the Waterfront Theatre. Galway on the 15th of February, I'm in Leisure Land. I'm already, oh, I'm booking fucking too many gigs for myself. I'm a stupid bollocks. And then I've Killarney at the Ainech on the 28th of February. So I'm after giving future me a granny into the bollocks there for February 26. That is, that's a lot of gigs for one month.
40:14 Blindboy Boatclub? Um, I always speak about trying to have empathy for your future self when you're planning anything. Like, I'm good when it's like next week or tomorrow. If, if I want to procrastinate a task, some annoying emails and I want to put them off, I say to myself, no, think about future you, think about you tomorrow. Does he deserve to be inundated with these emails when you already have work on? Do them now as an act of compassion for your future self. I'm shit at future compassion when it comes to six months away. So this week, I should not have booked three gigs in eight days. Very foolish, very difficult to get my podcast out when I do that. And in February, I'm going to be in the same fucking position. But come along to those gigs anyway, right?
40:59 Blindboy Boatclub? You can get those tickets as little Christmas presents if you like. But fucking England as well. October 26, like a fucking year away. But still, a tour of England, Scotland and Wales. Last week, I accidentally said that I had a gig in Leeds. I apologize. I'm not gigging in Leeds. I read the wrong list of gigs. I read out the wrong list of gigs. I'm fucking shit at promoting gigs. I'm terrible at it. I'm, the promoters want to choke me to death. But it has to be done. I'm not gigging in Leeds. And in October 26, I am gigging in Brighton, Cardiff, Warwick. Where's that? Coventry, Bristol, Guildford.
41:47 Blindboy Boatclub? London, Glasgow, Gateshead. Get a bit of Gateshead in, I learned about Gateshead. Nottingham, right. Fain dot co dot U K forward slash blind by. I have just met my contractual obligations to promote my gigs this week. Not Leeds, I'm so sorry. And there were so many whimpering Yorkshiremen.
42:11 Blindboy Boatclub? There was Yorkshire people in tears going, why no Yorkshire? Why no Yorkshire? I'm sorry, I love a bit of Yorkshire. Even though you don't. Hard to get a decent cup of coffee in Yorkshire.
42:27 Blindboy Boatclub? You love shit coffee, don't you? You love instant coffee up there in Yorkshire. And I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. We like Yorkshire tea, great tea, fantastic tea. But I, I won't do it this podcast, but I need to speak about. Witnessing the, the collapse of England and Scotland and Wales. Based on the standards of hotel breakfasts. A post Brexit thing. I will not get into it now because it's too big. We'll save it for another podcast, but I need to speak about it. Okay, back to the podcast podcast. So the first half I was speaking about genealogy of names. How I'd met Gerry Soft and he asked me, why am I called Gerry Soft?
43:12 Blindboy Boatclub? And I told him and it reminded me so much of Irish mythology. Particularly the fitness of names. A way of telling stories orally, that's like, like P. As a story structure, when you tell stories orally. It's like you're taking an onion apart, this multifaceted layers. Well, you're called this because of that, but I can't tell you why this is called that without telling you this. And it goes on and on and on. And it's very different to how a story might be written down. It's a form of storytelling that's actually, it's in line with systems of biodiversity.
43:48 Blindboy Boatclub? How can I tell you about what a bee is without telling you about the bee's relationship with the flower? But then I can't talk about the bee's relationship with the flower without explaining what pollination is. And then I can't explain pollination without telling you about the relationship that flowers have with the soil. But then I can't talk about the soil without the rain and the sun. But then I can't talk about the sun without talking about the universe. Oral stories follow a an ecological structure. It's a system, systemic. Writing is data, it's a bit more linear. You can go back, you can go forth, you can read something again. Like heroes in Irish mythology, they always have nicknames.
44:33 Blindboy Boatclub? So, for instance, Cú Cullen. Who was Cú Cullen? I can't tell you who Cú Cullen was without telling you, well, his name actually isn't Cú Cullen, that's a nickname. His real name was Setanta. But why is he called Cú Cullen? Well, Setanta was a young boy of about ten or twelve, but he was hard as nails. He was, he was no ordinary boy. And one day, Setanta was playing harley in a field with some other boys, and he was just beating them. He was flying all around the place really fast, superhuman strength. Then he got into a fight on the playing field and he, he beat like six other boys. And there was a fella called Cullen, who was a blacksmith, was watching this and he
45:18 Blindboy Boatclub? was like, oh my God, who was that young fella there? He's gonna be a great warrior, my God, who? And then Cullen says, who are you? I'm Setanta. Wow, well, I'm Cullen the blacksmith and I'm really impressed with you, you're gonna be a great warrior. Why don't you come visit me? So Cullen goes back to his forge. And then Setanta goes, oh, I'm gonna go visit Cullen now. And he does, but Cullen, whatever happens that night, Cullen forgot that he'd invited Setanta. And when he hears the noise outside, he lets loose his hound, his big scary dog, and the dog attacks Setanta.
45:58 Blindboy Boatclub? So Setanta gets his harley and the slither, which is a ball, and then he fires it and it goes into the dog's mouth and then kills it, this really legendary dog of Cullen. And then Setanta feels really guilty that he's just killed Cullen's dog. So he says to Cullen, you know what? I'm gonna take this dog's place and I'm gonna guard now. I'm your guard dog now. So then Setanta becomes Coo Cullen, which means Hound of Cullen. And that story's written down, I think the seventh century, seventh century in this thing called the Varbascahaiga, which is the words of Skahock. But that's written down because it was oral beforehand.
46:42 Blindboy Boatclub? Or like, I don't know, if your name is O'Neill, if your name is O'Neill and you're like, what? Why is my name O'Neill? Well, then he can go, well, O'Neill means from Nile. Who the fuck is Nile? But he's not just Nile, he's Nile of the Nine Hostages. Nile of the Nine Hostages? How, what type of fucking name is that? How do you get a name like that? Nile of the Nine Hostages? Well, thousands of years ago, there was this king in Ireland called Ochad Magmadon. And he had a wife called Magfind, she was from Munster. And the king and the wife, they had three sons, okay?
47:22 Blindboy Boatclub? And Magfind, like, I think they're middle aged at this point, right? The king is maybe in his forties or fifties. Magfind is probably in, in her forties or fifties too, because her sons are a bit older. So the king and Magfind have three sons. And Magfind is like, well, one of my three sons is definitely gonna become king next, definitely. But then the king kidnaps a princess, the daughter of a, of a Saxon king, an English Saxon king, which had put this story maybe 1500 years ago, because the Saxons are about.
48:02 Blindboy Boatclub? So the king kidnaps this, this girl and now she becomes a, a covil, what's called a covil, a female slave. Her name is Karen, spelled C A R E N N. Karen Castov, which means Karen with the curly black hair. So this young, this young girl now gets pregnant by the king. She gets pregnant. And now Mogfend, the king's wife, is like, fuck this. No fucking way, no way. If she's pregnant, if she has a son, then that son might become king. Now, you might be thinking there, that's a bit mad. Why would she give a fuck about that? She's got three sons already and the oldest one of them is gonna become king.
48:46 Blindboy Boatclub? No, that's not how it worked in pre-colonial Ireland. There was a system called tanistry. It's where we get the, it's where we get the, the word tarnished from today. Tarnished is second in command to the Taoiseach, to the prime minister. So anyway, under the system of tanistry in, in pre-colonial Ireland, it didn't matter that the old, the oldest son didn't necessarily become king. The best son became king. The son who was most worthy of it became king, which is quite different to what's a British monarchy. And obviously, I don't think they were very concerned about what the British monarchy would call illegitimacy or a bastard. It didn't matter that the king got this cove, this slave woman pregnant. That didn't matter.
49:30 Blindboy Boatclub? If she had a son, that son had an equal chance of becoming king to his wife's three sons. So the wife Mogfend is very upset, very upset. So she basically tries to get this, this young slave girl, Karen, to miscarry. She makes her do backbreaking labour because Karen's a slave. She's a slave. She makes her do backbreaking labour in the hope that she's gonna miscarry, but she doesn't. And she gives birth to this little boy called Nile. So Mogfend is like, fuck, it's a boy. She's the queen and she's like, I'm not having this slave girl's child
50:09 Blindboy Boatclub? possibly taking the place of one of my sons to become the next king. So she's like, have him killed, have him killed. He's not allowed in the kingdom. And then Karen is like, well, I'm not gonna kill my little baby. So she goes, what if I just banish him instead? Is that, is that okay? And Mogfend goes, okay, get rid of him. So Karen gives little baby Nile to a poet, a poet who lives up in the woods. And this poet.
50:36 Blindboy Boatclub? Raises Nile with a love of poetry and knowledge and literature and nature and all the stories of the land. And Nile then grows to be a boy who's mad fucking smart, really wise. Poet's name was Tarna Agas. So then when Nile comes of age and he's a teenager, his dad, the high king, who already has three sons, which your one Mog find, the dad's like, hold on a second, I had a fucking baby son there about thirteen years ago, where the fuck has he gone? And then Karen says, well, Mog find wasn't happy with the fact that I was having a son, so I gave him, I gave him to a poet. I didn't want him to die, I just gave him to a poet. So the high king says, go and find him then.
51:19 Blindboy Boatclub? If my son is off living with a poet, he's thirteen now, bring him back. Because the king was old, he was dying. And remembers the system of tannistry, so the king is, look, I'm ready to die, bring back my son. Doesn't matter that his ma was a slave, he's my son, bring him back. And he's gonna have to compete with my three other sons from Mog find, and they're gonna compete, and the winner, the winner will be chosen by the goddess of sovereignty, the goddess of the land. Then we'll decide. Nature, nature will tell us who is to be the next king. So it's winter, and the king says to his four sons, right? It's cold, I need you to fetch fire. Go and find fire. There's a sacred well, and if you go to this sacred well, you will get fire at this well.
52:02 Blindboy Boatclub? But the well is guarded by the Kailak. The well is guarded by a very powerful and dangerous hag, okay? So you're gonna have to defeat this hag if you wanna get the fire from the, from the sacred well. So all four brothers head off in search of fire at the sacred well. And the three brothers, the Blang de Mog find, they're, they're older, and they just go to Nile, who the fuck are you? And then Nile says, my father is your father, I'm your brother. And then the lads go, alright, okay. Dad, dad got your one Karen pregnant, his cover, right, okay? And they're not threatened by Nile at all, because he's the runt. He's a little kid, and they're big, strong, older brothers.
52:47 Blindboy Boatclub? And then they start asking him questions. See, the brothers had grown up in the castle, and they were trained in fighting and, and how to be warriors, and they say to young Nile, Can you use a sword? Did you, did you train how to fight? And Nile goes, no. Said, but what, what did you do? I, I lived in, in the forest with a poet. So the lads are like, this fella hasn't a hope. The Kailak is just gonna kill him. He's not even, he's not even a threat. He's a child. So they all get to the fucking well anyway, and it's guarded by the hag, by the Kailak, this big, dangerous hag and the Kailak, the winter goddess. She's so scary and so terrifying.
53:28 Blindboy Boatclub? The three older brothers are just paralyzed. They, they don't even know how to begin to fight her. She's that terrifying. And then young Nile is like, I learned the lore. I learned the lore because I was raised by a poet. I know the stories. And the stories are that the Kailak, the big scary goddess of winter, that she, she transitions into the beautiful goddess of summer and spring, Bridget. So that big scary Kailak over there, I know she's scary, but she'll reveal herself as Bridget. If we just go at it the right way. And the right way isn't to go up and fight her. So Nile walks up to the bit, the big, the hag, the scary Kailak.
54:15 Blindboy Boatclub? And kisses her fully is what the manuscript says. So he fucking shifts her. He kisses her tongue. And he's only about 13. And then suddenly the Kailak transforms into, into the sovereignty goddess, into a beautiful Bridget, the goddess of summer.
54:32 Blindboy Boatclub? And she says, him, this fella, I choose him. He is to be the next king. Cause you see in those days, the king was married to the land. The king was married to the goddess of fertility, the, the land goddess. And really what that story is telling us about, about this fella called Nile, who lived 1500 years ago.
54:55 Blindboy Boatclub? Winter would have killed people. Like, this is fifteen hundred years ago in Ireland, this was serious business. You couldn't grow food. It was pastoral, the economies were based on fucking cattle. You had to make it through winter. So Nile did something. He got fire, he kept people warm, he stored food. Whatever Nile did, he took his people through winter into summer and there was a bounty for crop. And there was plenty. And that's what that story means. Because the hag turned into the beautiful goddess, I know that that's the Kailak, the goddess of winter, turned into the goddess of summer. That's my reading of it.
55:39 Blindboy Boatclub? So Nile, anyway, becomes king and he becomes a famous king, a very powerful king. And when he becomes king, he's legendary. He becomes renowned for military power overseas, for raiding, especially along the coast of, like, Britain at this point. The Romans are fucking gone. So Britain in the fourth, fifth century, it's Anglo Saxons, warlords. It's not the unified might of the Roman Britain. So Nile as king, he becomes great at hostage-taking, taking hostages.
56:18 Blindboy Boatclub? Going in with a boat with a bunch of hard cunts, going into a kingdom and then stealing somebody important. Could be the king, could be the king's daughter, could be a brother, stealing a person of importance for ransom. Probably because Nile's ma was a cove. She was a Saxon princess who was stolen and lived as a slave. And if this sounds terrible, it was fucking terrible. The culture probably would have been brutal. Pre-colonial Ireland, you had all these petty kingdoms, you didn't have towns.
56:55 Blindboy Boatclub? People moved pastorally with cows. You had an economy that was based around cattle. You had huge amounts of cattle raiding and then hostage taking with all the raids. So the taking of hostages meant power. It meant I effectively controlled this other kingdom because I have something they cherish and value. And they better do what I say, because if they don't, then I'm gonna hurt this thing that they value. So I have power over that other kingdom. So Nile became so legendary at raiding and taking hostages. That he took hostages from, five hostages from Ireland, Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Meath. And then he took four hostages from abroad.
57:37 Blindboy Boatclub? He took hostages from the Britons, which is probably the Wales, the Saxons, England, the Franks over in fucking France. And then the Scots. So at one point Nile had nine hostages at once, which meant effectively he had leverage and power over nine kingdoms. As far as France, like Jerry Hard with the fucking chisel. This was so hard that he became Nile of the nine hostages. But then what happens when you're taking hostages? People don't like it when you're taking hostages. It's not a nice thing. So he ended up with a lot of enemies.
58:15 Blindboy Boatclub? So Nile, even though he was giving hostages back, or there was tribute paid for the hostages or ransom, whatever you wanna fucking call it. Nile couldn't really move around because he'd upset quite a lot of people. So he was eventually killed in Scotland, would have been killed in Scotland by someone who had a grudge. Cause it's like you stole my granddad there about thirty years ago. But this was up in Ulster. I think it's where you get the red hand, the red hand of Ulster, which bizarrely is, the loyalists have tried to take it now. But the red hand of Ulster is the O'Neill dynasty. So anyone who came from Nile became O'Neill of Nile.
58:53 Blindboy Boatclub? So if your name is O'Neill, if, if you were an O'Neill eight hundred years ago and you couldn't read or write.
59:03 Blindboy Boatclub? You'd have met a philla, you'd have met a poet, or a fucking druid, if you wanna call him a druid, but we didn't call him druids. You'd have met a person who could hold the lore in their mouth, who could remember the stories, and you'd say to him, "Why am I called O'Neill?", and then that person would have told you that story, and they'd have gone on and on and on and on, and told you that story orally. And I reckon these people were neurodivergent, because it requires a neurodivergent brain to be able to remember all that stuff. Well, it doesn't require it, but it really fucking helps. And that's, that O'Neill story, like, that's oral culture, written down by monks in the, in the ninth century, it was first written down in a thing called The Adventure of the Sons of Ochad Mugmadon.
59:48 Blindboy Boatclub? That's the first time it was written down in the ninth century. Because it mentions Saxons and shit like that, we know that it's based sometime around the fifth and sixth century, so it existed in the mouths of poets for four or five hundred years before someone decided to even write it down. And it tells us too about the importance of poets and lorekeepers in early Irish society, because, you know, Niall was sent off to live with poets, he was sent off to train with poets, his brothers were in the castle learning how to use weapons, but he was sent off to the woods to learn about the lore, to learn the stories, to learn about nature, and that's what made him powerful, to be clever. Same with Fionn McCool.
1:00:33 Blindboy Boatclub? Fionn McCool was a kid with too many questions that his parents couldn't answer, so they said, "Fuck that, go and live with a series of poets until eventually he encounters the salmon of knowledge." But you also see the poets writing themselves into the stories. Like, if the poet is the person who raises the legendary king, then the poet is really important in society. So if you were an O'Neill and you asked a poet, "Why am I called O'Neill?", they'd tell you that story. And it's hard to know how much of that story is historically correct, because it's existing orally and then it's written down by monks, and you can never trust the monks. But they did DNA tests in, in 2006. They studied the Y chromosome of, of Irish men, which is the one that's passed from father to son.
1:01:16 Blindboy Boatclub? And they found that 21% of men in the North West of Ireland can trace their lineage to one man about 1500 years ago. And because of the concentration of these men in that area, and then the history of the O'Neill dynasty, it strongly suggests that Nile of the Nine Hostages was a real person, was a real king, and was actually that powerful. And also what it says is, this Nile fella had a huge amount of children with multiple women, lots and lots and lots of women. And given what we know about Irish society 1500 years ago, you have to assume that this
1:02:01 Blindboy Boatclub? was, there might be some truth there in that the story about his ma effectively being a kidnapped slave who operated as, as a cove, as a concubine to his da, that maybe this was, Nile was just a, a prolific prick who stole women and coerced them into sexual slavery. And genetically, one in five Irish men in the North West of Ireland in the 2006 study, they found came from one fella, most likely Nile of the Nine Hostages is the closest historical parallel we have with that one person. Now, I covered a lot of this stuff, slavery and early Irish society in my documentary,
1:02:45 Blindboy Boatclub? which is literally called The Land of Slaves and Scholars. But one thing I'd like to correct there, when I said, maybe seven, eight hundred years ago, if you met a philla or a poet or a druid, even though we don't say druid, if you met that person and said, I'm an O'Neill, why am I called O'Neill? They might tell you that story about Nile of the Nine Hostages orally. We don't know that because all we have is when it was written down in the seventh century. So who's to say it wasn't all made up by the monk who wrote it down? Because that's when writing came to Ireland. Powerful families like the O'Neills, they would be the ones paying for this.
1:03:29 Blindboy Boatclub? They would fund the monastery and now it's like write my fucking lineage on paper so that I can have a lovely story that goes back to a phallus called Nile, who was chosen by a sovereignty goddess to be the king. But I reckon it did come from earlier oral culture because there's too many mentions of the, the O'Neill dynasty across multiple texts. And then you've got just these little oral storytelling motifs, like even the mention of the goddess of sovereignty of the land, which point to something pre-Christian. So I pulled all of this podcast out of my hole this week. This wasn't very planned because I was a foolish boy, foolish boy, and I booked too
1:04:13 Blindboy Boatclub? many fucking gigs. I booked three gigs to a car within eight days and that includes travelling. And then also my BBC radio show came out this week, grounding, which you can get on BBC Sounds, I think, if you live, if you live anywhere where the Queen is on your fucking money. So this week, if I haven't been gigging or travelling to gigs, I've been doing promotion and interviews for the BBC thing and I've had very little time to prep a podcast this week and I'm kind of burnt out. I am, I'm getting a little bit of autistic burnout from all of that because it took me 90 minutes to put my shoes on this morning because I was thinking about snails.
1:04:58 Blindboy Boatclub? I know that sounds bizarre, but yeah, I was thinking about snails so much that the, the act of completing the task of putting my fucking shoes on just didn't happen, right? Because I was thinking about, I was thinking about snails and how snails use snail mucus, the trail that a garden snail leaves.
1:05:22 Blindboy Boatclub? They studied these and they found it actually communicates huge amounts of information about the snail's health and its genealogy. And I thought about how snails' trails are so similar to oral culture and Irish mythology in particular. So that was enough of a, that thought meant I couldn't put my shoes on for 90 fucking minutes. And that, that there is pure autistic burnout, where I lose the, the skill, the grounding mindful skill of, I know it's great to think about snails right now, but you have to put your shoes on. So let's put the shoes on first and then park the snail thoughts for a more appropriate
1:06:02 Blindboy Boatclub? time. I lose the, the discipline to be able to do that when I kind of experience burnout, which I get when I'm quite stressed. And another, when I met fucking, I started this podcast half talking about meeting Gerry Soft. So I met Gerry Soft, unplanned conversation in the street. That wasn't a taxing conversation to me because there was no small talk. I just gave him his genealogy at him. So this is why you're called fucking Gerry Soft. But when the conversation was over, he said to me, why is your jumper on back to front? And then I looked down, my jumper was on inside out. I was wearing a fucking jumper,
1:06:41 Blindboy Boatclub? violently inside out, violently. All the seams, all the tags sticking out, the fucking, the brand backwards, whole shebang. When it was when Gerry Soft pointed it out to me, I was like, yeah, that's pretty fucking back to front, isn't it? How the hell did I leave the house like that? And as soon as that happened, I went, right, okay, you're getting a little bit of burnout. I didn't notice that my jumper was on back to front. So that's all we have time for this week. I'd like to call that a phone call, but I don't know if it's that a phone call. Like I, I did, I pulled that podcast out of my hole there. Um, by which I mean, I was so busy with gigs, I didn't get my two or three days
1:07:23 Blindboy Boatclub? to sit down and do, do rigorous research. So most of the information in this podcast, I just pulled from, from memory. So hopefully nothing is incredibly inaccurate. But anyway, I'll catch you next week. Don't know what wit, but in the meantime, rub a dog, genuflect to a swan, wink at a sparrow, dog bless.
1:07:50 Blindboy Boatclub? Forgot to do the cases last week, by the way. Completely forgot because I was in a fucking rush. So here's more cases.
1:07:59 Blindboy Boatclub? Cads.
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