Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.

  • Joining me today, he reads books y'know, it's Chris Joel.

  • More of a value pack with each passing year.

  • Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.

  • ♪ I kissed a gull, and I liked it

  • Did you just say gull?

  • Yes, that was the joke.

  • -Okay, just... just clarifying that. -Enunciate, then!

  • And the bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray.

  • ♪ I... didn't come up with anything to say here. ♪

  • In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.

  • Every fact they get right is a point and a ding.

  • And there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is...

  • -That was pretty good. -Yeah.

  • And today we are talking about the Norwegian butter crisis.

  • Awrgh!

  • Of all the crises, up there with Cuban missile, I always find.

  • I can't believe that it's not a margarine crisis.

  • Well, that actually clarifies what I was going to ask which is...

  • -Clarifies! -Clarifies!

  • I'd like to say it was on purpose - no.

  • Just slid into that one.

  • The Norwegian butter crisis.

  • Was it a crisis involving butter?

  • In Norway.

  • You can both technically have a point for that, but I'd like a bit more.

  • Is that a bit like an essay question where you're just repeating the title

  • basically to get you out of deep water?

  • Now the question I have to try and think of the answer of is,

  • did they have too much or too little?

  • -Because... -"Aargh! There's so much butter!"

  • -I'm going for too much butter. -Butterlanche!

  • -Butterlanche? -Butterlanche.

  • The question was too much or too little?

  • -Well, too much. -Too little.

  • Exactly the right amount, which freaked everybody out.

  • Gary gets the point.

  • Too little butter.

  • So if there's a butter crisis does that mean there's a milk crisis going on as well?

  • -Oh! -Ooh. Yes.

  • Because doesn't butter come from milk?

  • Yes, it does.

  • Yay! Do I get a point for that?

  • Yeah. You don't get a point for butter coming from milk,

  • but you do get the point for

  • But, yes, heavy rains during the summer affected the grazing of cows and reduced milk production.

  • So what happens if there is a shortage of butter?

  • You buy butter from somewhere else.

  • Toast is awful, it's just dry with a topping.

  • We're talking basic supply and demand here, there is less butter therefore

  • Butter is more costly and only available to the crown heads of Europe.

  • I'm... I'm giving you a point for the first half of that answer.

  • Norway was gripped by smørpanikk which translates as...?

  • Some more panic.

  • Some more...

  • -Butter panic. -Yes.

  • I can think of like a Norwegian panic scale

  • which is "nor-panic, smør-panik, lots of panic".

  • So, yes, it got to the point where a single pack of imported Lurpak butter

  • Oh, Lurpak, oh...

  • Cost, oh, you know what, we get to do Price is Right rules here.

  • Here is a pack of butter.

  • -A pack this big? -Import...

  • -Here is a pack of butter. -Here is a pack of butter.

  • Mid-December 2011,

  • -so this is recent. -Salted or unsalted?

  • -It does not specify. -Because it does depend on the use,

  • because if it's unsalted that's more your bakers who are going to be throwing money at it.

  • Oh, no, this is... this is very much dietary butter.

  • -Dietary... -Dietary butter?

  • Dietary butter, there's a butter diet now?

  • I quote.

  • Slice it like cheese and put it on toast.

  • -Place your bids? -1,000 krone.

  • -1,000 krone. -Oh, s***, we're doing it in krone?

  • No, we're not doing it in krone, I don't have a calculator here.

  • I'm doing it in krone.

  • 1,000 krone is about 100 quid, I think.

  • Yeah, that's more or less 100 quid, so

  • 1,000 krone!

  • I'm going to say the equivalent of 25 quid.

  • I was going to say 100 quid, but he's already got that, so let's say £150 or 1,500 krone.

  • Gary is correct, £32 for a small pack of butter.

  • Hang on, 32 quid for a pack of butter?

  • Yeah. It's about the same as you pay in Saino's now for Lurpak.

  • So why did this not get resolved by... by the free hand of capitalism?

  • Because the free hand of capitalism had too much butter on it,

  • it was all slippy and couldn't grip it.

  • They could pass the butter but they couldn't pick up the corners.

  • Just sliding out of their hands.

  • I think the butterfingers of capitalism

  • has just summed up everything that's wrong with the world, Gary.

  • I'm giving, yeah, you know what...

  • Mystery Biscuits.

  • Hey!

  • Actual satire.

  • Why did they not just import more butter?

  • -Tariffs. -Yes.

  • 'Cos… 'cos not in EU.

  • -Yes. -Topical.

  • Hold on everybody, Radio 4, Radio 4, get the...

  • get the big reel to reel recorders running, we're coming.

  • Yes, tariffs on butter, there was a deficit of 500 to 1,000 tons of butter in the country.

  • Just one shipping container.

  • That they can see over the border in...

  • ...Sweden? Norway?

  • -Yeah. -Yeah.

  • That is a land border.

  • Yes.

  • (Thank you.)

  • I'm all a bit hazy around that region, I don't know who's next to what.

  • Surely that affected Sweden as well because the weather should be similar around there, right?

  • You say that, what did some Swedes do?

  • Did they taunt them on the border by eating really thickly buttered toast?

  • -I'd do that. -I would actually, yeah.

  • To Lancashire!

  • Post butter over the border?

  • -Try and make... -Smuggle, butter smugglers!

  • Yes.

  • What's in the van? "Nøt bütter."

  • A number of individuals were apprehended by the authorities

  • for attempting to smuggle butter across the border,

  • whilst Swedes posted online adverts offering to drive butter to Norwegians.

  • Did they get around the customs by greasing their palms?

  • Hey!

  • No.

  • A Danish television show also broadcast something.

  • Television.

  • I need to learn to be more specific with my questions.

  • Did they just have some slow TV, Norway style,

  • but of just butter melting in a kitchen somewhere?

  • Someone's just watching going, "What a waste."

  • Sad chefs with empty pans go looking with big puppy dog eyes.

  • And going, "If only I had some butter."

  • Do you know what, yes, they broadcast a satirical emergency appeal to send butter.

  • This isn't a joke, there are people without butter in this country.

  • They gathered 4,000 packs to be distributed to butter starved Norwegians.

  • -Bloody hell. -Really.

  • There's a lot of very dark stuff in here, but there is also the Ark of Taste.

  • What?

  • Is that like the Ark of the Covenant but withwith tasty treats?

  • "Don't look at it! It's full of...!"

  • The butter just comes flying out, fried foods.

  • "I'm melting!" But it's butter, it's all just butter.

  • Is it an institution kind of thing that is a... a catalogue of national tastes?

  • So would it have the fermented fishy canny thing in it?

  • Almost, there's one word you're missing in there,

  • which is, yes, it's a catalogue of international foodstuffs and tastes and things like that.

  • Extinct.

  • Nearly.

  • You're not longer culturally dying out like Welsh died out, that sort of thing...

  • That'll do, endangered heritage foods.

  • So is it all stuff that people either can't be arsed to make any more,

  • they've decided it's not good for you and it's gone out of fashion kind of stuff

  • and then everyone's forgotten about it?

  • Yeah, pretty much, it may not be forgotten about, but it could be.

  • Or rules have presented it being done like unpasteurised milk, that kind of thing.

  • Does anyone want to name some of the things that are in the United Kingdom section of the articles,

  • just in terms of categories, if not exact things, what are we famous for historically?

  • Cornish pasties?

  • No, they're fine, aren't they?

  • There's loads of those, there was one on York Station this morning.

  • Just lying there abandoned, sad music playing over the top of it.

  • Some kind of cheese?

  • Yeah, it's mostly cheeses and grains, that's… that's the history of Britain right there.

  • What a great duo they were: cheese and grains.

  • -And potatoes. -Potatoes, really?

  • -Potatoes. -Any specific famous potatoes you might know?

  • King Edward?

  • Maris Piper?

  • You're just naming potatoes now.