Interesting Celery Fact No. 362

Celery is packed with pentopeptides, the latest anti-ageing ingredient. A leading cosmetics manufacturer was recently threatened with legal action for claiming that celery was not contained in its product when their manufacturing plant was raided by the celery police and was found to contain 43 tonnes of the vegetable. When asked why the company made this claim, a spokesman said "well, celery's just not cool, is it?"

Interesting Celery Fact No. 158

A brief passage concerning celery from little known 18c Welsh novelist Arwyn Jones novel "The Tiny Mind" was for a time mistaken by scholars for a lost section of the book of Ezekiel. It was this which led to the extraordinary "celery cults" of midwestern America, about which so much has been written.

Little Known Celery Poem #1

Oh mighty dawn sentinel
Of thrusting foliage and indomitable fibre
Thy alabaster column standing proud
Enshadowing all, like some dark rider
Oh prince of the market garden
Denizen of the salad plate
Unpalatable yet strangely ever present
How long until you seal mankinds fate?

Percy Shelley

This poem was published as part of a joint anthology with Byron, in 1817. The collection, entitled "To all the greenest pastures" was primarily concerned with salad stuffs, but, being of the romantic era, was not without it's references to root vegetables.

Interesting Celery Fact No. 972

Until now, the prosthetics used to create the heads of Kling-ons in the popular television series "Star Trek" have been made from a rubber, taken from a cast of the actor's head. However, recent developments in preservatives means that the substance of choice, celery pulp, now no longer dissolves on contact with human skin, and is set to replace the rubber. "Celery is ideal for our purposes," said the show's Head of Make-Up and Prosthetics, Danbert McEagleburger. "It also cuts down on the food bill too - once the guy's scene is over, he can just eat his own damn head."

Interesting Celery Fact No. 5

Between 1978 and 1981, the Chesham and District Conservative Ladies Association embarked on an escalating campaign against celery. Initially, the vegetable was banned from Association meetings, on the grounds that it was crude and ribald in shape, and ought not to be seen in public. After a while the Ladies Association decided that it was their responsibility to protect the public at large from the evils of celery, and so was launched the infamous, and increasingly extremist and brutal, Celery Limitation Subcommittee.

The CLS, as it became known, started by writing to local groups, progressed to picketing greengrocers and salad bars, and by the end, were thought to be behind acts of violence and intimidation towards local market gardeners. Much of the suffering could have been avoided, except that the local council followed a policy of appeasment, resulting in a ban on celery on all council premises, and local bye-laws being passed to prevent the eating of celery in public.

Eventually, an enquiry by the City of London police force revealed that the local police were too cowed by the CLS to interfere, and that the shadowy group was carrying out vigilante attacks on local celery eaters. Their web of informants had spread fear throughout the area, and there were reports, never confirmed, that they were planning an attempt to overthrow the government, and put in their own anti-celery administration. Today, the ringleaders remain behind bars, pending a Truth and Reconcilliation project.