Someone keeps leaving plates of peeled bananas on a British street corner

Cassie Brummitt can’t remember exactly when she first saw the bananas.

It wasn’t long after she moved to Beeston, a small town outside Nottingham, England, about two years ago. 

She was walking past the intersection of Abbey Road and Wensor Avenue, and there they were — a bowl containing upwards of 15 peeled bananas “all in a pile.”

“I remember thinking that was very strange,” Brummitt told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

It wouldn’t be her last encounter with bananas on that corner. The amount of bananas, she says, varies. Sometimes they are in a bowl. Sometimes they’re on a plate. But they’re always peeled and stacked, and left near a hedge at the same intersection, like some kind of potassium-rich offering. 

‘It seems kind of covert’

At first, Brummitt felt as if she’s stumbled upon a secret nobody else knew of, like the sightings were her “own private little thing.”

But then she learned from social media that the bananas are a longstanding — and occasionally divisive — local mystery.

“I don’t think anyone knows [where they come from]. Or if they do, they keep quiet about it,” she said. “But yeah, I have no idea. Like, I’ve heard that maybe they appear really early in the morning or late at night, so it seems kind of covert.”

Beeston resident James Oviedo walks his dog past that corner just about every day, and says the bananas have been showing up for “at least a couple of years now.”

“There’s always a big bunch of them peeled on the plate and they always appear to be drizzled with what seems to be honey,” he told CBC. 

“It’s very strange and, to be honest, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for people to start asking questions.”

Oviedo says the neighbourhood is residential, but the banana corner isn’t in front of anyone’s home. So, as far as he’s aware, nobody’s ever captured footage of the fruit-leaver in action. 

According to a recent story on BBC News, the bananas seem to appear, like clockwork, on the second of every month. 

“I kind of wondered if it was a maybe a sentimental thing. Like, I don’t know, like a superstition, maybe,” Brummit said. “Sometimes people leave out bits of food for fairies at the end of the garden, for example.”

But if that’s the case, the fairies don’t seem to be hungry.

“Usually they start to go mouldy and eventually someone will chuck them into the bush next to the corner,” Oviedo said. “The plate often ends up disappearing and I think that’s because the folks who pick up litter remove it. I’ve also seen the plate end up on the side of the road smashed before.”

Canadian banana mystery

The strange British phenomenon has echoes of another banana-related mystery that’s long been unfolding in Canada’s North. 

For years, someone has been discarding banana peels at a stop sign on a concrete traffic island at the intersection of North Klondike and Alaska highways in Whitehorse, resident Jenny MacKinnon said in an email after hearing about the Beeston bananas on As It Happens.

“Its a known fact by most locals,” she said, “with zero context or anyone fessing up.”

Lewis Rifkind, who often cycles past the traffic stop, says he’s been seeing the peels for “at least a decade.”

He’s heard speculation it began as protest against composting bylaws, but he suspects the real story may be far more mundane. 

“Maybe it is just routine that this person, you know, who has a banana perhaps every day or whatever, whenever they come to town, and they’ve just gotten into the habit of flinging it,” he told Köksal. 

‘PLEASE, RESPECTFULLY: NO MORE BANANAS!’

Meanwhile, back in Beeston, the rotting fruits have become a nuisance and an eyesore for some residents.

One frustrated neighbour recently went as far as to erect a sign that reads: “PLEASE, RESPECTFULLY: NO MORE BANANAS!!”

“The uncollected plates and rotting bananas leave such a mess!” the sign goes on to say. “Wishing a Happy New Year to you all! From a Nottingham Clean Street cleaner volunteer.”

But it was to no avail, Oviedo said. The bananas kept coming.

When Brummit saw the sign, she was surprised someone was upset about the bananas. For her part, she’d grown to appreciate the small thrill of being privy to an bizarre local mystery.

Plus, she says, it gives people something fun to talk about.

“It doesn’t really hurt anyone, and it kind of brought me a little bit of joy, you know, just walking on the street,” she said. “It’s quirky, and there’s nothing wrong with things that are a little bit quirky.”