What Are These Strawberries Doing on My Nipples? - I Need Them for the Fruit Salad!

[Dave (imported)]

>>One of the comments says look at the AMAZON page and see what "people who bought this like looked at" ...

>>Kinda scary to think about..

>>;););)

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs ... uit-salad/

>>

>>There are so many active links in the story that it might be worth going to Publisher's Weekly to see them.

>>

Oh, dear friends, it’s been a while since we last entered these hallowed halls of plunging mediocrity. So long that there is dust on How To Avoid Huge Ships. Cobwebs on Dildo Cay. Mold on Microwave for One. Some other sign of disuse on Moon People. But back into the Worst Book Ever Castle we must go, because there is a new book to add to the gallery. We must do our duty and place it where it belongs, for the circle must be closed.

What Are These Strawberries Doing on My Nipples? … I Need Them for the Fruit Salad! isn’t just notable because it has both an exclamation point and a question mark in it–what you’ll discover upon digging deeper within it is a tale of vast sadness and infinite strangeness.

It all begins with Vanessa Feltz, the book’s author and owner of one of the oddest Wikipedia pages you’ll ever see. In case you don’t want to spend the time reading it, here’s a brief chronology:

-She is educated at Cambridge.

-In the 80s and 90s, she writes for The Jewish Chronicle and the Daily Mirror. Nothing weird so far.

-In 1995, she writes a book called What Are These Strawberries Doing on My Nipples? … I Need Them for the Fruit Salad! This is where things get weird. Henceforth, the book will be referred to as Strawberries, and also as The Fulcrum of Weirdness.

-Feltz begins doing a segment for the U.K.’s Channel 4 morning TV show The Big Breakfast, in which she interviews celebrities while lying on a bed.

-In 1998, she gets a daytime TV show called The Vanessa Show on the BBC for a lot of money. In 1999, the show gets bad publicity and is ultimately cancelled when some of the guests were alleged to have been actors. You can almost hear the Fulcrum creaking.

-The bulk of the rest of her Wikipedia page (2000-today) focuses on her various comebacks and appearances on TV, including The Weakest Link and Celebrity Big Brother.

-Neat fact, just because: she lives in the house that was once occupied by John Hugh Smyth-Piggot, a clergyman “whose Clapton congregation declared him to be Christ, a compliment he accepted.”

What you learn upon reading Feltz’s biography is that she’s something of a national punchline, though no one can specify why. What you also learn is that she’s nothing if not tenacious, consistently attempting to secure her place in the media: The Guardian has called her “officially the hardest working woman in broadcasting.” So the vitriol is a bit puzzling. She’s won £150,000 for a cancer charity and an additional £10,000 for Cancer Care. She was named Speech Radio Personality of the Year at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2009.

What we’re trying to say is that having no prior knowledge of her, Vanessa Feltz seems like a pretty decent person, so if nothing else The Fulcrum of Weirdness lives up to its name–it serves as a gateway into a study of curious public figure that an entire nation doesn’t like (getting voted 93rd in the “100 Worst Britons” polls seems somehow more hurtful than making the top 10), but doesn’t know why.

But back to Strawberries. Purportedly a book of “intimacy” tips for women, Strawberries is an enigma because if you try to figure out what’s inside, you just end up finding a bunch of baffled people all over the internet who doubt its existence, and can’t even begin to comprehend that it actually has writing on its pages.

And it’s not only Strawberries insiders that are confounded by the book: “what are” is a very common beginning to a Google search for basically anything. What this means is that someone going to Google to find out everything from “what are the best fondue recipes” to “what are these horrible spots on my body” will possibly find “what are these strawberries doing on my nipples i need them for the fruit salad” as a result. Don’t believe me? Evidence here, here, here, and here.