Mon 08 November 2021:
A giant 7.9kg potato found in a New Zealand couple’s overgrown garden may set a new world record for the heaviest of its kind ever to be discovered. Colin and Donna Craig-Brown were weeding in their Hamilton garden when Colin hit the large tuber.
The couple have grown fond of the potato, nicknaming it Doug and taking it for walks. The current Guinness world records entry for the heaviest potato is a 2011 specimen found in Britain, that weighed in at just under 5kg, with the Craig-Browns saying they are waiting to hear if Doug will be the new record holder.
“I didn’t know what he was till I jammed the garden fork into him and dragged him out of the ground and gave him a bit of a scratch and a poke and tasted him,” Craig-Brown said.
In the weeks since their unusual find on Aug. 30, the couple’s potato has become something of a celebrity around their small farm near Hamilton. They’ve named the potato Doug, after the way it was unearthed, and Colin even built a small cart to tow Doug around.
“Once we’d dug him up and everybody had a look and a poke and a fiddle and a squeeze and all that sort of thing, we showed him around and put him on Facebook, it just went a little bit silly,” Craig-Brown said. “They call it viral.”
“He’s happy in the freezer,” Craig-Brown told Radio New Zealand’s Jesse Mulligan. “Pull him out every now and then chuck him in the sunshine and let him see the outside world.”
The previous potato record-holder weighed 4.98 kilograms. The couple say they have applied to register Doug as the biggest potato in the world but they have not yet received a reply from Guinness World Records.
A more official weigh-in at a local farming store put Doug at 7.8 kg. The Guinness World Records entry for the heaviest potato is a 2011 monster from Britain that weighed in at just under 5 kg. The couple say they’ve applied to Guinness to have Doug recognized and are waiting to hear back.
Guinness said it couldn’t share information on the application and that the British potato remained the record-holder, for now at least.
Since their discovery, the couple stated that they have grown fond of Doug and enjoy daily strolls around town, pulling Doug along with them on toy trucks and trolleys.
The couple has not thought of how their journey with Doug will come to an end but as of Nov. 3, Doug has been well-cleaned and put in the freezer.
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