Introduced and transcribed by Barnyard Slut

In dear need of assistance, Mr. Tayto was introduced to Mr. Tatyo by a career diplomat whom he consulted in his search for a reliable individual who might assist his family in transferring a reasonable sum of money abroad to a private account. On behalf of his late father, Mr. Tayto, Mr. Tayto decided to solicit Mr. Tayto’s assistance to transfer the sum of €26m. He deposited the money in a private security company and declared it to be official consignment belonging to his foreign affiliate based in Monte Carlo. As an international partner, Mr. Tayto helped Mr. Tayto clear this sum from the security company on transferring the box to Ireland, using his name as the beneficiary of the fund. On acceptance of this proposal, Mr. Tayto agreed to give 25% of the total sum to Mr. Tayto for his assistance and 5% for the expenses incurred in the course of the transfer. With his share of the Tayto fortune, Mr. Tayto established the ‘Tayto’ crisp company in 1954. Mr. Tayto meanwhile was busily working on his own ‘Tayto’ crisps enterprise, which opened in 1956. The race was now on to be the first producer of cheese and onion in Ireland – one narrowly won by Mr. Tayto. Parity was quickly restored when Mr. Tayto’s achieved a rival cheese and onion capability and a concomitant commitment to consume it. The corporations’ bitter rivalry rocked the geopolitics of international potato-based snacks throughout the later half of the 20^th century. Indeed, for many, the inner-mind psychological milieu of these key decision-makers and entrepreneurs remains the defining barometer and image of this period. In town to promote the launch of Taytographies, a brilliant and vivid memoir of life under British rule, Mr. Tayto spent a few minutes chatting with Mr. Tayto on ITV's popular This Morning, an arabesque fabric of international politics. A transcript of the segment follows:

Mr. Tayto: (wearing a black balaclava to disguise his appearance): And if you’ve flown over Ireland, and everyone must have done, then you know the words that will close this little sequence ...

Montage of Tayto adverts are played, closing with Mr. Tayto saying “The taste of home” followed promptly by Mr Tayto saying “save a packet.”

Mr. Tayto - catchphrases for our times. And we have saved a packet in bringing the taste home, because only one of them is here now for the craic. Mr Tayto, dia dhuit ar maidin, top of the good morning to yer.

Mr. Tayto: Maidin mhaith. Hay ware ya?

Mr. Tayto: Did you know when you started ... I mean, you know, you must have done the first aggressively small packet, not knowing that something so parochial was going to turn into what it did, but did you have an inkling that it was going to become a global sort of phenomenon?

Mr. Tayto: Na, na, naw. It were weel that A mind that it jist a massive tank o lard an Tandragee and Dublin.

Mr. Tayto: That was it?

Mr. Tayto: Right. We were stoup and roup implicated on the same plane, in the same territory. Tayto wis aye lamentin the bad things is got. When yer local yer ephemeral. It turned intae 12 years, weel 50 years, we’ve neer went awa; at least no metaphorically speaking.

Mr. Tayto: And in a sense, you haven’t, because they’re constantly being consumed and redistributed horizontally.

Mr. Tayto: Right, but A mean, A keep ma haudin thare.

Mr. Tayto: You have a home in Ireland?

Mr. Tayto: Weel, na. A go back and forth maistlie. The discursive picnic... na naebody ever haed ony idea that a wis gonnae git oan tae this, that it wadhae the kind a legs that it haed. But leuk at us sittin here the nou. I look like Snaw White, ye knaw. <laughter> An the discursive picnic is going oan and oan forever. It’s wunderful.

Mr. Tayto: And they’re saying a network of women scholars and activists might be remaking them.

Mr. Tayto: Weel, we did a newfangle flavour packaged wae the look a glossy magazine reproductions, their intense lit reminiscent a contemporary plenishin catalogues exerting pouer, but adding tae the fallacy a the attempt tae haud in. And A wis the Governor in the TV ad. Can ye believe that?

Mr. Tayto: You mean the Governor of Tanagree Castle?

Mr. Tayto: Naw, the Governor a the Emerald Isle.

Mr. Tayto: You’ve really been promoted, haven’t you?

Mr. Tayto: Yeah, A’ve gotten wily and political.

Mr. Tayto: And what about Mr Tayto?

Mr. Tayto: Weel, Tayto is ... A made a migrasophic documentary last year oan his Detaytours project, at ma hame in the Principality of Monacco, and even then there wis some quaisten aboot his heal. A just hae tae operate fae a position a knawledge a the impossibility of manging. But there is nae ony answers, mony starting pynts that imply multiple beginnings, mids and ends, all existing in ane wark at different blinks of their individual unfolding, just blether. So, you just don’t knaw. Ye cannae see him, tho.

Mr. Tayto: You mean he’s kind of become a recluse?

Mr. Tayto: Aye. His wife, Judy, that A see whenever A’m ower there, says Mr Tayto’s hame an he’s barrie, an A don’t know if that’s ... but, there we are.

Mr. Tayto: But, you’re a bit younger.

Mr. Tayto: A’m a testimony and a secret that isnae revealed and Mr Tayto’s ... A dinnae knaw whit he is ... that’s neer been exactly establishable, ye knaw? But, let’s say 93-odd.

Mr. Tayto: I don’t know, maybe you have to have a really large ego to handle that kind of panoptic power and success. You know, that bit in the ad, when he goes <mimes Mr. Tayto turning around to face the camera in the ad’s opening shot>, like that. Did he think that was funny? Because we all laughed at that here. We all thought that part was really funny.

Mr. Tayto: Um, naw, Mr Tayto didnae think that wis funny. It wis pairt a his cultural, political and religious conviction.

Mr. Tayto: <laughing> I want to show the clip we showed before, again, one more time. Because I want to ask you, and anyone at home, what is wrong with these ads? One ad here, it’s all wrong.

<montage is replayed>

Mr. Tayto: In fact, there were two wrong bits in that ad there.

Mr. Tayto: Whit?

Mr. Tayto: There were two scenes where you got the girl.

Mr. Tayto: <laughing> A gat to smuirich her, but that’s a. Then Mr Tayto wad thrapple her in the neist hauf oor. I never gat tae fla the girl. We always gat the bag o crisps... But A’m looking it that ad, ye knaw, thinking how much fun it wis tae dae that ad. A mean, it wis haurd, haurd wirk, but God, it wis fun.

Mr. Tayto: I’ll bet it was.

Mr. Tayto: Daein it week efter week, an then tae hae them turn intae the success that they did wis ... jist unbelievable.

Mr. Tayto: And what about the ‘taste of home’ catchphrase. I mean, actually, that must have been a mixed blessing. Because I don’t know if it’s this way in Monte Carlo, but here, I mean, the British public are very forward. They will come up and say things to people, especially if there’s a catchphrase around them and, I mean, you must have been approached a lot in this country with “save a packet” Eh?

Mr. Tayto: Weel, A dinnae leuk like a tattie sae much ony mair. At hame, fowk tell that, and, you knaw, the phrase ... it came aboot kind a like a micro-gesture or micro-event. Wan day we were shootin a scene an Mr Tayto rang tae say tae me, he wis gonnae describe a special offer for collecting packets, an he said, “Over there, Tayto.” A said, “Tayto? Wha’s Tayto?” “Well,” he said, “I have a father, when I was a kid, his name was Mr. Tayto, and we used to call him Tayto.” And so, then ‘Tayto’ wis born.

Mr. Tayto: That’s it?

Mr. Tayto: To be sure. And then the “taste of home,” A dinnae knaw, it’s this somewhere-between-creation-event-and-pegagogy-information-retrieval that interests me. The phrase when it wis said thegither, it jist hit.

Mr. Tayto: It seems to me that a lot of potato based snack commodities have come out, things like Monster Munch, with ads characterised by home-made effects, the use of “retro-technology” (Super 8). For example, I mean, in the opening sequence of the Monster Munch ad, the helicopter skimming above the water, armed monsters in balaclavas, that’s pure Tayto.

Mr. Tayto: A think it is, it echoes a time aboot 1968 when imaginative activism wis regarded as potentially chic. An A think that, you knaw, Mr Tayto wis the director, and he did the titles, an A wis a wunnerful writer a informatic subjectivity. We envisaged new forms a connectivity, provisional social structures no authorized by ony transcendent source or preconceived ideology, an that’s how A I think the ads haed the legs tae keep goin an goin, acause we haed some dang guid stories.

Mr. Tayto: You mentioned your graying thatch. That indicates to me that you’re quite happy to grow older - not old, but grow older gracefully. You’re not dyeing your hair. I mean, there are just so many corporate identities, I can’t tell you, with the Grecian 2000 and all that.

Mr. Tayto: Weel, ye knaw, ma chief joy in life it the moment’s being baseball coach tae ma son’s polo team. An his provisional dilogual soires, tae. A dae a heap a that.

Mr. Tayto: What, bourgeois soires?

Mr. Tayto: Right ye are, A mean, A go oot an help the eejits.

Mr. Tayto: What’s the gathering called?

Mr. Tayto: Weel, let’s see, thay changed. Thay’re Tayto Popular Front this year.

Mr. Tayto: The Tayto Popular Front?

Mr. Tayto: Ma son’s a guerilla picnicker committed tae deterritorializing tattie-based commodities <grins proudly>.

Mr. Tayto: How old were you when he was born? I mean, if he’s what how old now...

Mr. Tayto: Um,

Mr. Tayto: Well, that’s quite late, isn’t it?

Mr. Tayto: A’ve three other bairns grown. An A’ve three grandchilder. We a refuse tae subscribe tae teleological constructs a ‘age’. We sleep thegiether in the same bed.

Mr. Tayto: Everybody says that if you go into another marriage, or have a very, very late child, it’s a very different experience, because you’ve made all your mistakes the first time around.

Mr. Tayto: <grinning> A hope so! A mean, naw, but A’ve gat time wae ma son noo, an A neer had time wae ma others acause a bein a nomad and daein a the ads revoking binary schema an that.

Mr. Tayto: And you’re doing it again. They’re being repeated on Granada Ads Plus.

Mr. Tayto: Three times a day.

Mr. Tayto: From October 1st.

Mr. Tayto: Tae be sure. They’re free so that ye can relax.

Mr. Tayto: A huge hit for you here weren’t they, how many years ago?

Mr. Tayto: That wad be the twa year ago, they came oot the twa year ago this week.

Mr. Tayto: And this slogan on the new ad “the smell the taste the smell (ad in.)”, I read, was forged from this 50 year relationship you had with someone that has gone horribly wrong.

Mr. Tayto: It's funny, it's like ye knaw yer soulmate, ye believe in. An A still think that we’re soulmates, but A believe there’s mair than wan soulmate sometimes. And you jist grow apairt. An as much love as A still hae an honour him, besides harlin each others baws ower Ireland, you knaw, thare’s a level whaur....

Mr. Tayto: You’re generating a strong feeling of melanacholy and loneliness. (laughing) Would you like to phone our phone in? Go on..

Mr. Tayto: The thing is, ye jist kinda go, whaur's ma ire for masel, whaur’s ma..... A hid behind him, he hid behind me an, um, this ad is aboot me finding ma ain passion.

Mr. Tayto: Do you think all really hot ads come from a kind of.. not destroyed passion, but pain, even if it's pain that leads to the intense happiness of knowledge production.

Mr. Tayto: But the thing is, when somebody asks me, are you blythe, A'm getting tae a place a scowf whaur ye can be in dowie, ye can be in joy and sweltin and in cauld, fully inviting participation, so that ye experience it and tae me that makes ye tae the fore.

Mr. Tayto: Well, I have to say that's one of the best answers to a question I’ve ever had. This is very frustrating as I could sit and have a dilogual interface with you for ten minutes, but you're going to go.

Mr. Tayto: Ahm gonnae dae ma dynamic ideography ting.

Mr. Tayto: Good. It’s great to see you.

Mr. Tayto: Tank ye very much.