The Squid and Mashed Potato

Come on. There’s no need for us to be here any longer than necessary. Let’s split up, look for survivors and get out of here.

Let’s first address what the hell the Squid and Mashed Potato is. It’s a venue. Ostensibly a pub. After Vulva and Hoover put on their insane, two hour avant-garde art show shoutfest, the former claims ‘we’re having a postmortem at the Squid and Mashed Potato’, implying that they’re moving there from the place where the installation was performed.

And, let’s be honest, it’s an obvious play on a well known pub chain named after a shell-less snail and a leafy green salad vegetable. So the inspiration of the design here is loosely based on a couple of iterations of said chain’s brand identity. I’m sure we can all agree that this makes sense.

Regarding the show – Vulva is a green, androgynous and frankly terrifying multimedia artist who used to collaborate with Brian Topp and is now doing rather well for him / her / itself. They’re a completely pretentious, up-their-own-arse twat, but that’s kind of the point. He / she / it is portrayed by David Walliams, so I don’t think he had to do much research for the role.

In the end, Tim punches him / her / it in the face due to experiencing a compound Resident Evil and Twiglet-based hallucination, enhanced by ingesting a load of cheap amphetamines and not sleeping for about three days.

As a final note, I would like to say that all of this was broadcast long before Giggling Squid became a ubiquitous feature of the high street. A chain that isn’t Slug & Lettuce that I remain perpetually miffed at due to my girlfriend losing a cardigan at their Brighton branch and them lying about having locating it and keeping it safe to collect at a later date. Spoiler: they did not do this.