More Stuff Irish People Love

Do you love the taste of Red Lemonade, change into your swimming togs under a towel on the beach or find yourself admiring 'the grand stretch in the evenings'? Then this book, jammed with hilarious reflections on what it is to be Irish, will have you nodding in agreement with every turn of the page. Contains approximately 100 things that Irish people like, such as; Waving hello to complete strangers on country roads. Using the 'cupla focal' to stress our Irishness when on holidays. Going for a few pints after mass. Claiming a relative who fought in the Easter Rising. Explaining hurling to foreigners. Nicknaming statues, for example 'The Floozie in the Jacuzzi'.

A couple of years back, one of the paparazzi magazines featured a shot of an Irish movie star emerging from an Irish shop in Hollywood laden down with a box of Tayto crisps containing sixty packs. In many ways it summed up the Irish obsession with this snack food brand, in that the actor, for all his millions, still craved the simple joy of Ireland's favourite crisp. It's actually a common sight in Irish airports to see the Diaspora leaving their homeland burdened down by large boxes of Tayto. And the general population of just four million they've left behind manage to crunch their way through roughly three-quarters of a million packs every day!

So why the obession? Well, put simply, Irish people will tell you that Tayto are the best tasting crisps in the world and will brook no argument on the matter. American crisps, by comparison, are so bland they defy belief, and English crisps taste like deep-fried cardboard. Some have suggested that our love of Tayto is linked with the potato's place in our history (The Famine etc) but as they weren't invented until 1954, this seems unlikely. We also take pride in the fact that Joe 'Spud' Murphy, the Tayto company's founder, also invented the world's first Cheese & Onion flavoured crisp.

When certain foreign supermarkets started operating in Ireland in recent times, instead of Tayto, they stocked some unheard-of cheap crisps from God knows where. They realised soon enough that it wouldn't matter if they were actually paying people to take them off the shelves, the Irish wanted their Tayto and nothing else. The poor eejits copped on quick enough.

Tayto recently enjoyed success on the bestseller list with the brand's own book and the company have now even opened up their own theme park, called Tayto Park. And recently a Chinese entrepreneur who fell in love with the crisps while living here, launched the product in his homeland where Tayto are known as 'tudoushenshi shuping'. Quite the mouthful.

And then there's the Tayto Crisp Sandwich, an-other Irish delicacy. A pile of Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps sandwiched between two slices of buttered bread. Ah, that moment when it crunches thunderously just as you sink your teeth into it and savour the taste of the world's greatest crisp! Thank you, Joe Spud Murphy, one of Ireland's true heroes.

(PS The authors of this book have no connection with the Tayto company or any of its associates, but if the nice people at Tayto want to send the authors a few free packs for the nice plug, please feel free to do so.)