Irish urban myths.

Hangdogroad

That story about the caller to the Gerry Ryan show who said they wanted to be "buried balls deep in Bibi Baskin". Its a funny story but I've never come across any evidence that it actually happened. Dont remember GR ever referring to it.

The one about Jimi Hendrix being asked who did he think was the world's greatest guitar player and replying "I dunno, ask Rory Gallagher". Thoroughly debunked yet still regularly recounted as fact.

dickdasr1234

I can tell you that I used to have Gerry Ryan on the radio in my shop way back when.

With several elderly ladies present, I couldn't believe my ears when the Baskin bit came out. I was mortified (even though I thought it was a brilliant response) but it never took a fidge out of the out wans!

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120725759#Comment_120725759

..

Xander10

Was it not the Joe Duffy show?

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120725832#Comment_120725832

Any of the examples I've come across online are in relation to the Gerry Ryan Show but some of these stories change over time through word of mouth.

There is an urban myth about being asked to mind a pet rabbit for a friend the urban myth also involves the next door neighbours dog, now this actuley happened to a relative many moon ago. They often wonder were they the origans of the urban myth, but most urban myth are hundreds of years old they are just updated by each generations updates.

Count Dracula

I snogged Kate Moss in the VIP of the Kitchen nightclub in 1993. She was doing a shoot with Johnnie Rocha. She had a mobile phone the size of a pint glass. Wore the absolute face off me.

Knacker Dwarf’s porno movie.

HalloweenJack

The one about the Traveller girl who isn't interested in fingering and says "No fancy stuff, just lob it into me there, boss".

Its so widespread that a friend of mine from London told me it. He had a childhood friend that would visit cousins in Ireland in the summer. He came back one year bragging about how he'd pulled a girl and she'd said that to him. When my London friend told me it, me and another Irish lad there burst out laughing and informed him how his mate had been having him on.

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120726239#Comment_120726239

It was “horse it into me” when it first came out.

StupidLikeAFox

"I was once in a restaurant and asked bono's friend to take a picture of me and bono. Then my friend told me that man was none other than Bruce Springsteen"

This one was regurgitated on the Graham Norton Red chair one time and they were bowled over by it.

StupidLikeAFox

"I ate a Chinese once and puked it up, when I was cleaning it up I found a dogs microchip in the puke" is another one I've heard from a few different people

tibruit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120725759#Comment_120725759

Yeah I remember the Gerry Ryan one too. I was driving to work. Funniest thing I ever heard on the radio. Ryan was having serious discussions with listeners about where they`d like to be buried. It would have been in `90 or `91.

orangerhyme

These seem to have gone out of fashion.

Lots of them from late 90s and early 00s. Just before internet and smartphones, so we had to create our own content.

There was one about sweet corn under a guys foreskin.

Guy on LSD with down syndrome child. This one is funny cos the person swore it happened to their friend in Waterford but I've since heard the same story from Americans so it's actually a global urban legend.

Brian Kennedy and Ronan Keating.

Another one about Ronan Keating having slept with someone's housemate.

Semen in fast food place.

Michael Jordan in a lift.

Bono and Bruce Springsteen.

Brother and sister in nightclub toilet.

Student on speed doing college exam.

Fella on building site who knew Lindsay Lohans grandfather.

Just after 9/11 guy gives dropped wallet to Muslim "Stay away from London/LA/NY etc next Monday"

I'm sure there's lots more I've forgotten.

They always seem to start with a loose connection like someone's cousin in Dublin/Cork/Galway told me this, it's legit.

Leg End Reject

The non-Irish national caught cutting a child's hair to disguise them in a public toilet, caught just in the nick of time before the child was abducted.

Dramatik

The story about someone minding a dog and the dog dies somehow so the person decides to try and find a similar dog to replace it but has to burry the dead dog first.

They have the dead dog in a duffle bag and are on the dart going to the burial location. When they get off the train someone asks them what's in the bag as it looks heavy and do they want help getting the bag up the steps.

They reply no and the person asks them what's in the bag, they lie saying it's music equipment.

Suddenly without warning the person grabs the bag and runs off, thinking there's expensive equipment in it.

There's probably more elements/variation to the story but that's all I can remember of it. I've heard it told by a few different people over the years.

Be right back

The one about the girl on the tube late at night, who spots people acting strange at the other side of the carriage when someone who enters the tube, tells her to come off the tube with him at the next stop?

cj maxx

Gerry Ryan : (during a discussion on whether people would like to be buried or cremated when they die) - 'Would you like to be buried or cremated ?'

Caller : 'Oh , buried Gerry'.

Gerry Ryan : 'And where would you like to be buried ?'

Caller : 'Up to me balls in Bibi Baskin !' 

HalloweenJack

Another one was the lad playing GAA/football/rugby and dislocated his hip. When they popped his hip back into place, one of his balls had slipped into the socket just beforehand.

The grimace factor among teenage boys always overpowered logic when that one was told.

Anesthetize

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120726679#Comment_120726679

I read something like this here on Boards.ie a few years ago. It stuck with me and may have been a true story. The story was along the lines of a girl was on the Paris Metro late one night. A group of men get onto the same carriage, holding up another girl who cannot walk and is clearly worse for wear, and the men are like "don't mind her, she's drunk" etc. The "drunk" girl was put sat across from the girl, and appeared to be staring blankly at her in a weird way.

Meanwhile another man who was on the same carriage, comes up and sits near her. He tells her to get off the train at the next stop and that she was in danger. She gets off at the next stop and the man also gets off. The girl was initially panicky when the man approached her after getting off. But he then explained to her that the other girl on the train was not drunk, she was dead.

Be right back

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120727129#Comment_120727129

When I was told the story, it was a niece of someone working for the same company as me! Definitely London and the guy that helped her was a doctor!

893bet

The one about the “foreigner” leaving the buggy at the bus stop.

Anesthetize

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120727183#Comment_120727183

It may have been London either, can't remember clearly.

893bet

The one about the lads bringing a corpse to collect the pension.

Be right back

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120727212#Comment_120727212

If only that was...😏

Hangdogroad

Re: the Gerry Ryan Show / Bibi Baskin thing, I did a search on Irish News Archives which has most Irish newspapers of the past 200 years digitised. Its free to use in libraries and its a great resource. Anyway, I figured thrred have to be some holy Joes writing letters of complaint or columnists giving it a mention. I took photos of the search results.

"Balls deep in Bibi Baskin" with no time setting drew no results.

Next looked up results for "Gerry Ryan+Bibi Baskin" covering 1988, the year the GRS began, to 1995. Brought up a few a few articles where they're both mentioned but nothing relevant to the caller story.

1995 to 2008, ditto. Choose that end date as its seems to be around then that it makes appearances online. Again, no mention in newspapers of the story

2008 to 2022, no results.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120726633#Comment_120726633

I heard that one back in the 60s, told by my friends’ mother who used to bring us on evening walks and re out entertaining tales, sometimes relating to areas or houses we’d be passing. There was one about the dead dog in the bag, or was it a dead cat that a decent person picked up off the road as a civic duty. They then had the misfortune to have the bag stolen, but all the thief got was a gory mess of a dead animal.

cj maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120726865#Comment_120726865

It was definitely buried in BiBi

thesandeman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120725832#Comment_120725832

This is an urban myth in itself.

There was never a programme called "The Joe Duffy Show".

gormdubhgorm

That Hill 16 in Croke Park was originally built out of the rubble from O'Connell street 1916 Rising. A lot of auld lads/GAA heads in pubs love saying this one.

But it is not true at all. For a start 'The 'Hill' was built in 1915 to commemorate the battle of Galipoli WWI .

https://www.sportsjoe.ie/gaa/hill-16-was-named-after-a-turkish-battle-not-the-easter-rising-40331

'The terrace was actually built in 1915, in time for that year's All-Ireland Finals, and was named Hill 60 after a battle in the First World War in Gallipoli.

The August 1915 battle for a hill in Turkey saw the Royal Dublin Fusiliers suffer heavy losses, and, in keeping with the tradition at the time, the hill was named in its honour.

Just as the Kop in Anfield is named after a battle in the Boer War, the terrace became Hill 60.'

--

But the GAA did not like this at all and renamed 'Hill 60' - 'Hill 16' in 1931.

The rising rubble Urban Myth was really set in the 1960's

"In 1966, Raymond Smith, a journalist for the Sunday Independent, wrote how he personally met a man in a Dublin pub who had been paid 6d. a load to carry rubble to Croke Park. According to Dr Rouse: "History was overwhelmed by the power of men in pubs telling stories."

While, according to T.P. Kilfeather, writing in the Sunday Independent in 1967: "Few of those who watch Croke Park matches from the corner of the ground, known as 'Hill Sixteen', know that they stand on a hill made from the rubble of the ruins of O'Connell Street after large sections of it had been devastated in the Rising of Easter Week, 1916."

silliussoddius

The ghost hitch hiker seems to pop up in a few areas.

BrianD3

I can't think of many good and specifically Irish ones.

Bob Geldof didn't say "give me your fcukin money" at Live Aid. What he actually said was "fcuk the address"

Eamon Dunphy didnt say he was ashamed to be Irish after Ireland drew 0-0 with Egypt in WC 90. He said he was embarrassed for the country and ashamed of the performance.

One that isn't specific to Irelead but I've heard from several people here is Poo Butter. The story goes that someone sh*t in a tub of butter at a house party then covered up their sh*t with more butter and put the tub back in the fridge, leaving a nasty surprise for the next person buttering their bread.

Another one that there isn't much about on the web so may be Irish is - burying a live cat in the ground with its head sticking up and then running over its head with a lawnmower.

BrianD3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120727299#Comment_120727299

I have little doubt that it is a myth but searching the archive for Bibi Baskin wouldn't necessarily bring it up if it is true. Compared to today, there would be far less fuss over and awareness of such a comment. The media might barely pick up on it. Even if they did report on it, they might describe it as a "vulgar comment about a named TV presenter" and that would be the end of it.

maccored

theres the urban legend of the fella and girlfriend in the A&E. She's beat up looking around the head and he seems to have serious groin issues. Fill in the gaps - but ive heard numerous people claim to have seen the same scene in about twenty different hospitals when in reality they were all recounting an urban myth

Goldengirl

Probably because it happens a lot.

I have seen a few lads in A+E with 'groin injuries', from hoovers and leaf blowers.

The Bibi Baskin thing did happen.. I remember my parents teling me about it as they were big fans of Bibi.

But it was all Gerry Ryan's fault of course!

pajor

I'm not sure if they're exclusively Irish urban myths, but a couple of the top of my head:

Something do with a creepy clown and a parent asking the child what did they look like. They then point to the corner of their room "It looked like that one."

Also the one where a 'friend' had anal sex on the sitting room couch of his parents' gaff while they were away for the weekend. Lady proceeds to have diarrhea. They blame it on the dog and the parents have the dog put down after they get back. 😩

Badly Drunk Boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120727299#Comment_120727299

I searched the Irish News Archives too, and found it mentioned in a Barry Egan interview with Donna McCaul (who represented Ireland in the Eurovision with her brother Joe) in the Sunday Independent on August 17, 2008. The 'Michelle' mentioned by Donna here was Michelle Heaton, and for some reason, Barry Egan was reminded of the Bibi Baskin incident.

Just because Barry Egan mentioned it in 2008, doesn't prove that it was true, but the fact that it wasn't written about at the time it supposedly happened, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. As BrianD3 said, the media wouldn't have been as likely to mention something that was deemed to be vulgar. There was an awful lot less 'bad language' on the television and in the papers back then, and even if the call to Gerry's programme was mentioned, it probably wouldn't have been reported verbatim.

By the way, this was how I searched (and it was the 7th result):

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120728230#Comment_120728230

Interesting. There are a few other mentions of it in online forums around this time which suggest it had been floating around as a story for a few years at least. I suspect it might originate in the post below on this website. Its included in a post that includes a load of other supposedly true storys, the majority of which I'd say never happened.

https://nickhemingway.com/Comedy/Display.asp?ID=9

BrianD3

i went a lot less specific with the Bibi search and have found mention in the Evening Echo, Dec 24th 1990. So at least now we know that it happened before then, if it happened at all, which it probably didn't

by DAVID O'CONNELL

"Remember that phone caller to the Gerry Ryan programme who had some particularly storng views on Bibi and exactly where he'd like to be buried?"

tibruit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120727758#Comment_120727758

It`s not a myth. I clearly remember hearing the conversation as I was driving in to my place of work and I worked there for about a year from about July `90 until June `91, so that would be the timeframe for the broadcast, unless Ryan was doing a playback of funny pieces from previous shows but I`m pretty sure it was live. It stayed with me because it was hilarious at the time.

NewbridgeIR

This story was doing the rounds when I was in primary school (late 1970s / early 1980s)

Young boy makes his first communion and is taken to Tramore for the day by his parents. While there he goes into a public toilet while his mother waits outside for him. Unfortunately he is attacked by punks and has his penis cut off by them. He then bleeds to death.

Other variations:

1 it was toilets on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin not Tramore

2 the "punks" made him eat his penis (some say they wrapped it in tissue and shoved it in his mouth)

mazdamiatamx5

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058301238/irish-urban-myths

I thought the second one was true but it was Clapton.

Say Your Number

More of a rural legend but if you meet a badger it will bite your leg and won't let go until it hears a snap, breaking a twig will make it leave.

I've seen plenty of badgers when walking in the countryside and they always run into the ditch when they see me.

Charles Babbage

The old canard that Socrates, the 1970s Brazilian soccer star, had studied and played for UCD, or in some versions the College of Surgeons or DIT and played for Shelbourne

https://www.the42.ie/socrates-ireland-4082766-Jun2018/

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120728817#Comment_120728817

Used to hear that about otters as well.

blade1

Everyone remember during the pandemic when they were first talking about lockdowns?

Half the country had a sister whose boyfriend was in the army that had got called in to enforce a lockdown next day.

That pandemic probably spread more idiocy than COVID.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120728817#Comment_120728817

I thought that was true!

Richard Gere and the hamster.

These type of stories have really gone out of fashion.

Count Dracula

The one that bugs me the most is the concept that Charles J Haughey was some sort of a bad guy or a tyrant. It is simply not true. The fact remains to this very day that he was simply a hard working paddy man who liked the finer things in life. He enabled the greatest horse racing industry on the planet by offering a 2% tax on race breeding, that worked by the way. He built the IFSC - that employs and generates billions for Ireland. He championed the small man and enjoyed chicken gravy and chips, I know that, you could see it in his cheeky smirk. He only pretended to be ostentatious to wind up the begrudge. He stood tall and never turned his back on anyone. He loved a challenge, he had the heart of a Gael. I like to think that when the squares, who tried to expose him as the godfather of Irish political corruption, were broadcasting his unique antics every day... that he had the temerity to ask Maureen to "turn on the 6 o'clock news there till we have a good laugh" , i really hope he had a giggle at it.

Any man who drives a wine Mercedes Benz has class, let's be honest about it. You can tell a lot about a man when you see the size of his driveway. it is the truth. Not just the length of his driveway, but the stone he lays it on. Be it pebble or crushed granite, Tarmacadam, No driveway, a few steps , one that might fit one car or maybe two. Or, one that you cannot even see the fooking front door from when you first pass over it, now that's the driveway of a real man!!

No one stands near to Charlie, he took the VAT off kids shoes, he picked up every hot spud thrown at him politically and ate the chunt of a thing, right in your face without salt. A justice minister , agriculture, Finance , no bother lad. Let's do this. He was afraid of nothing and was a natural Irishman. He brought this country to where it is today, we would be nothing without his golden hand.

Don't be a stooge, living like a sheep and towing someone else's drab line. Be what you are here for, why you were gifted your birth and the life you lead.... why you learned to read this tripe..... You hadn't the wit to ask anyone, you were thought for nothing by the best education system in the universe.

The concept he was a rogue is appalling, he was sent from the gods themselves to harbour this country when it needed it most. Don't let anyone tell you any different, they haven't a clue anyways.

Chicken Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120728817#Comment_120728817

and putting a Ryvita in each sock when walking where there are badgers, so the badger hears the snap of the Ryvita then leaves you alone

ofcork

Heard it was cinders from the fire fellas used put into wellingtons so the badger would hear the crack.

trashcan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120726591#Comment_120726591

I heard that one about a theme park in the US.