Yeah, faggots are a north country variety of meatball. Extra nice in onion gravy!

And fags are something you stick between your lips and suck on greedily (if you're a smoker).

I knew from fags...had just never heard the term "faggots" for an offal meatbally thing.

But. Spotted dick, Charlie. No American can order that with a straight face. Here, one would see one's physician about that.

Where I come from, the top brand of frozen faggots is "Brains".

*snort*

Of course it is.

And the zombie jokes just keep slapping me in the ass and calling me Sally.

Remind me, in the first week of February, to buy you a tin of Brains Faggots. It's possible Customs will take them off me on my way to Boskone, but at the very least I can provide photographic evidence for you ...

Oh, I *believe* it.

It's just so y'all.

(OTOH, I would display it at work with great pride.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hydepodcorner/3085879577/

Oh, my. That's still better.

As in Pinky and Mr?

(Somehow, I feel convinced, Charlie should work this into one of the Laundry stories.)(Or perhaps not.)

Presumably not the same as the brewery...?

Don't think so. Brains brewery (who were sponsors of the Welsh Rugby team for a while, leading to lots of jokes about sports jocks wearing shirts with "Brains" printed in large letters on the front) are, I believe, no connection to the faggots people.

Good lord, is this really the first time you've heard of faggots as a British foodstuff? I've never had them myself but the phrase "faggots and peas" pops up in all sorts of places.

Yes. Yes, it was.

I guess my closet anglophilia is showing again, or something. I thought that was pretty common knowledge.

I am, however, reminded of a Canadian comedy sketch that involved a francophone language enforcement officer insisting that the Ye Olde English Pubbe he was inspecting must post bilingual menus, and much hilarity ensuing as various dishes such as spotted dick and faggots and peas and bubble and squeak were offered for translation, or not. I cannot, alas, recall what Canadian comedy group that was. Not the Frantics, but I hear tell there may be many others.

I've never heard it either.

So am I (linguistically unrepentant, that is). It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing the first time I went to the UK and saw faggots on a menu in York.

[wanders off, whistling theme to The Twilight Zone]