Meet Doug The Potato, a big, nasty celebrity potato
Doug hails from the fertile soil of Wellington, New Zealand and may be the world's biggest potato
Every once in a while, a celebrity appears from out of nowhere. These figures—sometimes conspiratorially dubbed “industry plants”—rocket to stardom with ease based on some immeasurable quality that commentators spill gallons of ink trying to define.
The latest of them (which we will in fact accuse of being a plant of some type), has just arrived… and it’s a strikingly ugly giant potato from New Zealand named Doug.
According to the Associated Press, Doug was unearthed by Colin and Donna Craig-Brown on August 30th in their Hamilton, New Zealand garden. Perhaps unaware that their soil was blasted with gamma rays or saturated with toxic ooze, the couple were weeding when they encountered Doug in his earthy womb. Initially thinking the leviathan potato was “some kind of strange fungal growth” or “giant puffball,” Colin pulled it out of the ground and, throwing caution to the wind, “scratched away a bit of the skin and tasted it.”
It turned out to be a 7.9 kilogram (17.4 pound) freak potato that the AP compares in weight to “a couple of sacks of regular potatoes, or one small dog.” Doug, in short, may “quite possibly [be] the largest potato on record.”
Now, months later, a video from The Guardian shows Doug in action, being dragged around on the cart built for its transportation and wearing its favorite hat as its cradled in the arms of proud parents Donna and Colin. “We put a hat on him. We put him on Facebook, taking him for a walk, giving him some sunshine,” Colin told the Associated Press. “It’s all a bit of fun. It’s amazing what entertains people.”
While Doug prepares to shuffle off this mortal coil, growing spongier and grosser by the day as age catches up to it, it’s been placed in a freezer to await measurement by Guinness World Records. Doug is likely to win the award for Largest Recorded Potato (currently held by a 5 kilo British tater) and then, once its final duty has been completed, Colin plans to turn the huge potato into vodka.
Doug will live on in our memories even after it’s been turned into mutant potato booze, however. Donna and Colin say they’ll have “a celebration” when Doug wins the Record and, already, its birth has been duly noted by fellow New Zealand celebrities like Jemaine Clement.
[via Boing Boing]
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