Only in the UK Would This Be Considered Irrational

A Welsh man named Gareth Jones will appear on national television in Britain this week in order to explain his terrifying, overwhelming fear of Scotch eggs. For those blissfully unacquainted with the fearmonger in question, a Scotch egg is a hard-cooked egg wrapped in a sausage-meat mixture, breaded, and deep-fried.

Jones’s completely reasonable fear is not, as one might expect, based on culinary grounds. Instead, it relates to a childhood nightmare patterned after the classic children’s tale James and the Giant Peach. Only in Jones’s version, the peach was a Scotch egg. Thus, somehow, the very real and deep-seated terror.

The Evening Leader reports that his fiancee’s teasing revealed to the world at large the extent of the phobia:

[A]t a friend’s 18th birthday party he completely freaked out when she playfully chased him with a scotch egg on a fork. ‘I didn’t understand just how real his fear really was until that moment,’ she said. ‘Gareth got really agitated. I mean genuinely upset.’

A hypnotist working in conjunction with a British talk show has apparently cured Jones of his phobia, replacing it with a grudging but not overpowering dislike. Next up: curing my “irrational” fear of jellied eel.