Swedish puppet cook makes Scottish haggis with condom wrapping
Swedish parents were not amused when a puppet cook on a Swedish kids’ TV channel used a condom as one of the ingredients for a traditional Scottish delicacy, haggis.
The dish is a savory pudding made of sheep’s innards (heart, liver, and lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, spices, and salt, which is put either in the animal’s stomach or an artificial casing and boiled. However, as it turns out, the show’s producers found a more intriguing receptacle for the filling – a condom.
In an episode of the children’s television show on the SVT channel, a puppet cook of French descent named Bon stuffs a condom with the mixture needed for a Scottish haggis. At some other point Bon, with just a bit of manic eye-rolling, pulls a condom onto a mincing machine.
In the video available on SVT’s site, Bon explains that he doesn’t have an animal stomach, that’s why he decided to look for a substitute. His grandmother’s purse conveniently happens to be nearby. “Perhaps there’s something we can use. Balloons! That will work just as well,” Bon says, obviously delighted with the find.
But it soon becomes clear that Bon’s granny is a naughty woman – and it’s definitely not balloons that she keeps in her purse.
Apparently the most hilarious part was supposed to be the moment when Bon puts a sausage into a condom. It may have worked, if only the scene wasn’t so revolting and inappropriate, as Swedish parents claimed.
“I’m watching (…) Bon who is today making haggis and is using a CONDOM as a balloon because there wasn’t a sheep’s stomach. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?? Disgusting, unethical and highly inappropriate,” one angry commenter said on SVT’s Facebook page, according to the Swedish version of The Local.
“It’s scary that they feel that this is okay,” an aunt who watched the show with a six-year-old nephew said in an interview with Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
“Children are curious and notice everything. They see that it’s not a balloon and ask what it’s for. It is very provocative that they think it won’t be noticed. Children shouldn’t even be asking those questions, it’s completely wrong. You get really pissed off,” the woman added.
Despite the uproar, SVT’s head Johanna Gardare defended the show and the joke in a statement sent to The Local:
“I understand if you don’t appreciate this kind of humor, but I can’t see that it’s inappropriate by definition to show a picture of a condom in a humorous show aimed at children in middle school,” she said, adding that there had been only three complaints from parents.
“In my experience all content that touches at all on the area of sex gets more reactions than other content, so for that reason I’m not surprised,” she concluded.
This is not the first time questionable content on Swedish children’s programming has hit the headlines for touching on rather sensitive subjects. Last year, a Swedish children’s song about genitals Willie and Twinkle (or Snippa and Snopp in Swedish) went viral and was then released in English, turning into a global hit.
The issue of the possible effects of using a condom wrapping on the flavor of the haggis has, surprisingly, not yet been raised.
