“Sheep shagger!”
“Oi!
Boyo!”
“You don’t sound Welsh.”
“Can you say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrnd-robwllllantysiliogogogoch?
No.
“Sheep shagger!”
Where does this come from?
I get that all the time.
“Oh yeah I’m Bethan.”, “Oh okay, where you from?”, “Oh I’m from Wales.”,
“Ah sheep shagger!”
Honestly have had someone ask me once, “Do you have Tinder for sheep?”
Like probably one guy, in maybe like 1800s, who was caught shagging a sheep and he has
ruined it for everyone.
Some of them do have really nice eyelashes.
Sometimes you hear it so much and you’re just like “Yes.
Yes I am.
I’m in a committed relationship with a sheep actually.”
Oh for crying out loud.
“Oi!
Boyo!”
Have you like ever accidentally, “Oi!
Boyo!”
–ed.
Like you see your friend, “Oi!
Boyo!”
Like I don’t actually think anyone says that.
Like…ah I'm not too far enough in the Valleys then.
They do.
It'd be a bit better if they went, “Oi!
Bachgen!”?
Which is, you know, ‘boy’ in Welsh.
In London, mostly in a Wetherspoon's, they shout it to you.
So it’s like at least they’re making an effort, they’re not just adding an ‘O’
on to a normal word.
No.
That still wouldn’t be…that still wouldn’t be… really good, no.
They go all over the place like, “I am from Wales!”
Everyone thinks you’re from 'Gavin and Stacey'.
You think there’s…like we’re on a ship or something.
“Oh, what’s occurring?”
Lush.
That’s a good one, isn’t it?
Lovely.
Lush.
“Oh she’s lush.”
Solid Welsh word.
Yeah.
“Oh you’re accent is lush.”
There’s 3 words that like English people know.
There’s like ‘popty ping’, which in all my life I still have yet to use in an
actual sentence.
So bad.
Yeah.
That’s ‘microwave’ by the way.
I like ‘cwtch’.
I think ‘cwtch’ is my fav…
‘Cwtch’ is nice.
‘Pysgod wibli wobli’, Yeah.
Which is like jellyfish.
Yeah.
Wibbly wobbly fish.
You’ve got ‘butty’, ‘boyo’, ‘taff’.
There’s something in the human body…
You have to go… cwtch.
Cwtch.
‘Tamping, fuming, raging’.
Oh ‘tamping, fuming, raging’.
You can’t go, “Cwtch!”
it...
“Cwtch you mate!”, it doesn’t work.
“Wales?
Where’s that?!”
Did you not do geography at school?
The worst is when they go, “Oh is that in England?” and you’re like, “No!
It’s separate, where like… it’s this bit on the side!”
And one of them came up to me and goes, “Oh Wales, we thought that was a city in London.”
When I’m in New York I just give up talking about Wales.
There’s a step by step guide for doing it I think.
“Tell me something about Scotland.”, they tell me loads you know.
Yeah.
“Haggis, Loch Ness Monster…”
First of all you got to say, “It’s not in London.”
“England?”, “Ah the Queen, man, Benedict Cumberbatch…”
Then you’ve got to say, “It’s not in England.”
“Ireland?”, “Oh my God, I’m a quarter Irish.”
Yeah.
Then you’ve got to say, “No, it’s not part of Scotland either.”
“So what do you know about Wales then?” and they’re like, “Ah I know, I know…
I know they like…they like communicate via sonar.”
“Why you talking about mammals, I don’t get it.
Wales?
I mean where are you from?
Which country?”
Ah.
I can’t even say the name of this place.
I’m rolling my eyes if someone’s like “Oh my God can you say it?”
and I’m like, “Eugh.
Fine.”
That’s… that’s it, yes.
Shall I keep this here for reference?
Llanfairpwllgwyngog…
Llan…
Yeah.
Something.
Blablabla...
Yeah.
….gogogoch.
Yeah.
…gwyngyllgogery…
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio - gogogoch.
Did it!
Yes!
She’s really Welsh, ladies and gentlemen.
That’s the equivalent of a Welsh citizenship exam.
“Oh I love Tom Jones!”
I do though, he’s quite nice.
I like Tom as well, yeah.
Okay?
Yeah.
Him and Shirley Bassey are just two immortal tanned Welsh people.
Oh…yeah…
If I had it my way I would change the Welsh national anthem to ‘It’s Not Unusual’.
You know when people say, “Oh, I love Tom Jones!”
I genuinely have to wonder each time, “Oh which one?”
When you’re watching rugby and they go through the team it’s like, “Jones, Jones, Evans,
Williams, Jones, Jones.”
I know about 10 Tom Joneses.
Oh at least 50.
They just think we’re just chilling with celebrities like, “Oh hey Tom!
What’s good, yeah?
How are you?
Singing, still?
Yeah.”
And then I got to the loo and came out and this guy was like “Ey!
Ey!
Stay away from Charlotte!
Stay away from Charlotte!”
and I was like, “Who’s Charlotte?” and it was Charlotte Church just there at like
5am having a burger.
Everyone grew up with Charlotte Church.
Well yeah but not personally.
No I wasn’t like mates, like “Yo Charlotte!
What you doing?”
“I bet you drive a tractor!”
I’ve actually had that one.
Let’s set something straight, we don’t drive tractors.
You’re just as likely to meet an artist or like a playwright or a poet as you are
to meeting a farmer.
We have cars.
We’ve got everything now.
We’ve got like a Nando's and everything.
You always get, “Oh do you have broadband?
Do you have it?
” Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel we’ve got more than our share of farmers though.
“Have you got the round wheel yet?
Do your cars have the square wheels?”
“Do you guys have electricity?”
At school there was this whole tradition thing, where to pick up your GCSE results you’d
have to turn up in your tractor.
When did I last even go on a farm?
I hate getting muddy, I hate getting dirt on my fingers.
Oh my God you’ve lived in London for too long!
I didn’t have a tractor and I felt so left out.
Some people have got this in their head, right, that when you cross the border of the Severn
Bridge into Wales, it’s just one massive field.
The whole country with like Tom Jones, Stereophonics and 'H' from Steps and Charlotte Church standing
in the middle, waving.
Yeah.
Charlotte Church.
This one is insulting.
“You should just speak English.”
No.
Fuck off.
We are speaking English!
We are speaking English all the time.
Well no we shouldn’t.
Yeah, no we shouldn’t.
I love it.
I think it’s a beautiful language.
People don’t understand the history of it.
I am gutted that I don’t speak it to be honest.
And there are Welsh words that you can’t translate, like ‘hiraeth’, what a phenomenal
word.
No one I know really speaks it, like you can kind of say a few…
So you’ll just be talking to yourself.
Yeah, and like that’s apparently not normal.
Yeah.
It’s like longing for the homeland or for an idealised past that maybe never existed.
More than ever now, I don’t know why, more than ever now, I am proud of being Welsh.
Hiraeth.
Hiraeth!
Like you feel a little…feel a little…jump.
Hiraeth!
Imagine we both said we’re not proud of being Welsh and everyone in Wales will see
this video.
I don’t think I could move back.
It’s the opposite of cwtch.
Cwtch!
Hiraeth!
Cwtch!
Hiraeth!
Cwtch!
Hiraeth!
Might have some Welsh cakes thrown at you.
Yeah.
You get pelted with Welsh cakes.
Wherever I am, I’m like an ambassador for Welsh and Welsh-ness.
Like a proper Welsh nat- And it’s lush being Welsh.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, classic Welsh nat- over here.
You’ve got the coastal paths, national walks and all that.
Areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Very, very true.
True.
Look at us.