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Andy Mansh KNOWS coffee

Hello, I'm Andy Mansh. You may know me from television programmes such as Little Britain, Tucker’s Luck and Pop Idol. I’ve been asked by the Freds to provide a syndicated lifestyle column for their website, so that YOU can attempt to be ME.

Frankly, I’m not sure why I’m bothering – it’s not like I need the money, and my sense of innate superiority refuses to allow me to accept for one second that the lower-middle classes could even come close to emulating my sophistication and flair. Still, I have a spare half hour tonight, as Mrs Mansh has gone round to a friend’s house to borrow a Le Crueset turkey baster and I’ve run out of servants to beat. So, here goes. Hold on to your hats, folks!

Now, I know many things. For example, I know that the best way to make a homeless person cry is to burn a fifty-pound note in their faces before stamping on their willy. I know a dinner party recipe that is SO posh that the cost of the ingredients of the starter alone is more than your monthly take-home pay. I know about pensions and mortgages and shit. And I know how to stuff a mattress full to bursting with money and piss on it.

However, the thing I know best is coffee. So for my first column I’ve decided to share some of my knowledge with you, the pleb, in a vaguely patronising way that will leave you feeling slightly uncomfortable and anxious about your status in life. Just the way I like it, in fact.

The Coffee Cycle

To start off with, let's look at the global coffee cycle. How does coffee get from its origin into your cup? This is very important, as the source and processing of your coffee affects the taste even before it reaches your house. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, the only thing worse than a bad cup of coffee is having your nostril fucked by a swollen horse.

The entrance to the fabled coffee mine of Las Pogladorios, discovered by the Aztecs a while back, and stolen off them by the Spanish. Aztecs drank so much coffee that even their poos turned brown.

Coffee originates in the mines of South America, where it is dug out of holes in the ground by toothless peasants called Juan. Raw coffee ore is extremely toxic, so the lifespan of the coffee-miners is drastically reduced by the 18-hour days they are forced at gunpoint to spend underground. Most of them don’t live past their twenties. Boo fucking hoo. Like I give a shit.

A lump of raw coffee ore being carried by a peasant who has been gagged to prevent him from complaining about his working conditions. And quite right too.

Once mined, the coffee ore is loaded onto trucks and taken to a refinery, where it is crushed into granules by machines and then spat on by more peasants, these ones called Pedro. The spitting process is necessary because the amino acids in human spit react with the toxic compounds in the coffee, rendering them harmless. In the process, the peasants have to produce so much spit that after a few years they dry out and crumble. It’s fucking hilarious to watch, I don’t mind saying.

A Pedro preparing to hawk a greeny onto a pile of coffee

Once refined, the coffee is hand-spooned into huge metal drums and driven to a vast chemical factory on the coast where it undergoes the process of fractional distillation. This involves separating out the different grades of coffee, and it is here where the brown dye is added, plus a few other chemicals just for the sheer hell of it. A guide to the different coffee grades is given below. It goes without saying that I only ever buy the highest grade. Anything else and you might as well be wallowing in your own pus.

Grade 1: Has the consistency of bat shit and the taste of bat shit dipped in dog shit. Can be used as a substitute for creosote by thick people.
Grade 2: Looks like bent mud. Flows uphill in winter. Avoid.
Grade 3: Tesco value. Unemployed people wash in it. I fucking HATE the unemployed.
Grade 4: Passable. Tastes OK but is affordable, and that quite simply makes me hopping mad.
Grade 5: By this point, the coffee has turned into brown diamonds, and a teaspoonful costs more than the surface of the sun. THIS, my friends, is the good shit.

Grade 5 coffee like the stuff I buy all the time, even if I don’t want to drink coffee that day.

We’ll get on to actually making a cup of coffee in a minute, but just to complete the coffee cycle, it may interest you to know that after coffee is drunk, the coffee molecules pass almost unscathed through the digestive system, and are shat out of your bum into your toilet. Or your friend’s shoe if you’re weird like that.

Once the coffee molecules pass through the sewage system and are discharged into our rivers, they make their way down to the sea where they hatch. After a few days spent getting their bearings and feeding, they starts the long migration back to South America. Their journey is perilous, beset on all sides by predators such as tea larvae and whales. The little critters are determined, though, and after six months at sea they struggle ashore at Cape Cornoboroso in Brazil. From here they march overland in single file back to the coffee mines, where they collectively have a massive shit and die. And so the next generation of coffee is born, and the cycle is complete!

Coffee molecule hatchlings (not to scale) photographed in the Thames estuary after they have come out of someone's bottom

How to make the perfect cup of coffee

OK, now we come to the nitty gritty. Not literally! If your coffee has nits in and the texture of gravel it’s a safe bet to say you’re doing something wrong. You stupid fuck. But that’s why I’m here – to tell you all the Mansh way of making coffee. And the MANSH way is the RIGHT way.

In order to make a cup of coffee, you will need to be prepared, and you will need the right equipment. I recommend a daily programme of meditation to prepare yourself mentally for the task. If you can spend a couple of years on a mountaintop being tormented by an old Chinese dude with a mad beard, so much the better. As for equipment, you will need:

Step 1: Slap Consuella on the arse and point at your cup.
Step 2: Say "TWO SUGARS LOVE".
Step 3: Get the bitch to sprinkle some hand-rolled Belgian chocolate dust on top and make sure she doesn't forget the little marshmallow bits.
Step 4: Drink. Now who’s the daddy, eh? Eh? Come ON!

If you’re one of those people who can’t afford a housekeeper, I daresay there’s a method of making coffee by hand, but I’m fucked if I know what it is. And what I can't be fucked not to know is not fucking worth knowing.

Well, that’s all from me for now. Next time, I’ll be waving my platinum Amex card about and laughing right in your face.

Ciao!