Sunday Tribune January 13
"You are a bloated, disgusting, fat pig."
Erindipity never had a problem with being called the above as a tweenager. None whatsoever.
We did, however, have a problem with being called a "skinny, wimpy, little git" as this was an accurate description of a boy with pipe-cleaner legs, who was regularly bullied by butterflies and wore a crash helmet when it snowed.
Our pathetic physique was due to our habit of hiding food, particularly at breakfast time. School mornings began with Weetabix and hot milk. We really liked Weetabix with hot milk, but for some still mysterious reason, we felt compelled to stir it and stir it until it became a disgusting, dung-coloured emulsion. Even though we knew we were turning our favourite breakfast the consistency of cat puke, we couldn’t help it. We had to see if we could get all the lumps out (which we never did). Then we couldn’t eat it
Stuffing the bowl inside our pyjamas, we would sneak upstairs to the bathroom to hide the evidence of food-wasting.
Over time we discovered that flushing Weetabix down the loo was a non-runner as – due to its high-fibre content – it floated. Also, if any stuck to the side, it hardened like cement.
So we threw it out the window.
This practice continued for a number of years, until a man who had been painting the outside of the house asked our mum if she had been keeping cows on the garage roof.
"No. Why?"
"It’s covered in cow s***te, missus."
Another breakfast time ‘yeuch’ was eggs fried in the dripping she collected in an enamel bowl in the fridge. This would be added to over the course of many Sunday lunches and the only way of gauging its age was by slicing it in half and counting the rings. Depending on who was frying them, the eggs would variously arrive hard and shrivelled or runny and covered in burnt black fat. Either way, they tasted of beef.
These were secreted in various places downstairs: behind curtains, in the coal scuttle, in the cistern . . . One day our dad – who was an occasional golfer – pulled out his six iron and sent a petrified fried egg frisbee-ing across the fairway. He later discovered three more fossilised eggs clinging to his clubs.
Curiously, he didn’t give out, perhaps because he was too afraid to ask why his weirdo son was hiding fried eggs in his golf bag.
School lunches went uneaten too, due to a love/hate relationship with garlic salami sandwiches (our mum loved making them/we hated eating them).
As a result of this lack of eating we grew up looking like the pull-through they clean rifles with, and the butt of the usual ‘skinny’ jokes.
We mention all this here in the context of last Monday’s ‘Future Shock: Fat Nation’ programme on RTE, where we were told that 25pc of Irish boys and 30pc of girls are overweight.
The reason for this, we believe, is prosperity. Parents have more cash now, so they give their children more pocket money, which they spend on chips/burgers etc. We’re not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just that the pre-Boom generation would never have dreamed of spending their meagre money on food. That was something your mum gave you for free at meal-times. If you didn’t eat it, you went hungry.
If there’s one flaw in the current status quo, it’s that many parents spoil their offspring because they feel guilty about both having to work to pay for the mortgage. As a result Ireland’s latch-key kids are now a crowd of lard-arses.
With this body-consciousness in mind, this week we went in search of Ireland’s Skinniest Schoolboy (see above) and Fattest Man and, to our delight, discovered Ireland’s Fittest Corpse into the bargain.
Ireland’s Fattest Man
Roger Byrne, from Co Laois may or may not have been fond of his butter, but he weighed the equivalent of 728 pounds of Kerrygold (52 stone) when he wobbled off this mortal coil aged 54 in 1808.
If you have problems visualising 52 stone, then consider that Roger was over four times as heavy as Asha, the baby elephant born in Dublin Zoo four months ago (168 pounds).
As if being chronically fat wasn’t bad enough, the Laoisman was also named after the mark you get if you have sex up against a radiator.
Now let’s meet . . .
Ireland’s Strongest Man
There is an old 1950s reel in the Pathe News archive, filmed in a London gym, which begins with a shot of a man cleaning his teeth. He then bites the rung of a chair on which a girl is sitting, and lifts it off the floor, twirling it around. In another scene he lifts a weight with the girl seated on it and two young men perched on either end.
The doughty chap is Kerryman Michael ‘Butty’ Sugrue (1924/1977), a Kilburn Landlord who was the strongest man in Europe in his day.
Despite being a short-arse, Butty once pulled a fully loaded bus through the streets with his teeth.
On one occasion he got a former world champion boxer to use his stomach as a punch bag after lifting two men, tied together, over his head and spinning them around.
Another favourite trick was to tie a rope around himself and get six men to try and pull him over. They never did.
Butty was also a boxing promoter and responsible for bringing Muhammad Ali over to fight in Croke Park in 1972. To do this, he took Ali’s promoter around to meet his bank manager, who said Butty was "good for the $300,000" needed to stage the bout. The deal was settled on a handshake.
Those exploits aside, Butty is included here because of the singular diet he invented in 1968, when he decided to bury one of his barmen alive.
Mike Meaney was 33 when Butty planted him in a coffin nine feet under in the garden of the Admiral Nelson as a publicity stunt. For 61 days, Meaney – who was buried with some books and a torch – breathed through a hosepipe. For his daily sustenance, Butty fed him 1,000 calories of liquid food, plus Guinness, pumped through another pipe.
On the day he was due to be dug up, a huge crowd gathered to watch eight Paddies working away their shovels, to the strains of the London Irish Girl Pipers.
As the coffin began to emerge, Butty (never one to miss an opportunity) was the first to tell the BBC – and all of England – “we have him lads!”
After 15 minutes Mike rose from the grave wearing green pyjamas, sunglasses and clutching a crucifix. For a former grave-dweller, he looked remarkably fit and trim due to Butty’s Underground Diet.
Perhaps Butty’s diet may be the solution to dealing with today’s chip-gorging piglets – ground them and feed them through a hose.
Or perhaps not.
At any rate, it’s worth pointing out that – despite years of honing his superb physique – it was food that killed poor Butty in the end.
He collapsed carrying a fridge up the stairs.
So maybe this fitness thing is over-rated.
Chip Butty, anyone?
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