I used to love the wonderfully named Brain's Faggots as a child, in their little metal tray, wobbling in their fragrant gravy. Having just googled to confirm they're a thing, it's Mr Brain to you. I never knew there was a cheery butcher behind the random pork parts concoction that I have also assumed were produced in some giant porcine hadron collider. And it's not gravy, it's West Country sauce. I can't say I've had one since I was a child. I think I'm working up a craving. I'm not big fan of offal, words I'm comfortable saying, no one gets a t-shirt that reads '#1 OFFAL FAN.' I do like steak and kidney pie though. I had horrific experiences of liver as a child, my mother would cook it to indestructibility. It wasn't cooking so much as tanning. I remember once managing to sever a portion with my incisors, but a vessel remained, which snapped right back into my eye. I actually bled from my eyeball because of liver.
I'm greatly enjoying Parts Unknown on Netflix at the moment, every episode I swear he gets served tripe, which means we have a competition to be first to shout TRIPE! when the bowl arrives. (In last nights episode, he made a Frenchman eat spicy food – many years ago we took our French flatmate out for a vindaloo, oh my, I've never seen a human being turn that shade of red before.)
I have tried tripe once, but it was a posh tripe and bits, I forget the chap, one of the famous chef places in Soho. I figured he'd been cooking it since he was five to tenderise it. Even my grandparents wouldn't eat tripe. Anyway, it wasn't worth the effort.
I also used to love tongue sandwiches, made by my gran, I blame rationing, so do they I imagine. It was actually quite late in my development that I realise that tongue was literally tongue, sliced for my delectation. I was a slow developer, you should have seen the look on my face when I realised that the Durex on display at the local barbers wasn't a haircare product*.
*seriously, we were dared to go and buy a packet of 'johnnies' from the machine in a pub toilet, don't ask me why, we were about thirteen and in no position to use them, girls being a theoretical concept and magazines or the lingerie section of Freemans really not demanding you came prepared, and there on the prophylactic dispenser the familiar word – Durex).