The potato was found last week wedged in a machine at the L.E.V & Co packing station in Odensbacken. When The Local contacted the spud finder, Anders Eriksson, he said he'd never seen one so big. But what really got people talking was the unusual connection between the appearance of the potato and that of Kate Winslet from the nude scene in Titanic, where she tells a young Leonardo DiCaprico "paint me like one of your French girls" (or should that be French fries…)
The similarity was enough to catch the attention of Good Morning America, resulting in a minute-long discussion about the potato on the live programme – which locks in 5 million viewers each week. Presenters debated amid guffaws about just how similar the two looked, with one host stating that he thought the spud looked more like a baby hippo (see the video below).
One of the presenters joked that the Swedish workers named the potato "Leo dePotato".
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"It tasted very good," Eriksson told The Local on Thursday. "We thought that two to three weeks after washing and it being out in room temperature that we would be a bit disappointed, but we weren't."
Video of the Kate Winslet spud eating ceremony (courtesy of Nerikes Allehanda)
When quizzed about the potato's likeness to the UK starlet, Eriksson admitted that while he hadn't initially noticed, he could now see the similarity.
"And the attention has been great, it's really good for the 'product potato' to get some attention in media now with these GI- and 5:2 diets. Now we got the chance to talk about all positive things about potatoes, like the high vitamin and fibre-content," he beamed.
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