Back in November 2021, I wrote about a New Zealand couple who discovered a mindbogglingly ginormous potato in their garden:
Colin and Donna Craig-Brown of Wellington, New Zealand may have just broken the Guinness World Record for the largest potato ever measured — a 17.4-pound (7.8kg) ugly lump o' starch they've named "Doug." The previous record holder is an 11-pound potato from Britain, discovered in 2011.
Remarkably, the couple weren't trying to cultivate the gargantuan tuber; they were out weeding in the garden and just kind of found it (him?) there.
They submitted their evidence to the Guinness Book of Records — a publication, which I am compelled to remind you, was literally invented to sell more beer by giving people dumb shit to argue over while drunk. Still, to their credit, the Book of Records did their due diligence and submitted "Doug" to a DNA test, which revealed its (his?) true parentage: which is not a potato.
After months of submitting photos and paperwork, the couple got the bad news from Guinness in an email last week.
"Dear Colin," the email begins, going on to say "sadly the specimen is not a potato and is in fact the tuber of a type of gourd. For this reason we do unfortunately have to disqualify the application."
Despite this heartbreak, the Craig-Browns are still storing Doug in a freezer. As they told The Associated Press:
Craig-Brown remains a big believer in Dug, who still sits in their freezer.
"I say 'gidday' to him every time I pull out some sausages. He's a cool character," Craig-Brown said. "Whenever the grandchildren come round, they say, 'Can we see Dug?'"
"He is the world's biggest not-a-potato."
Perhaps Doug has a future as a decorative gourd then?
Giant New Zealand potato is not in fact a potato, Guinness World Records rules
