CeleBRIEties! Dairy experts turn bodily bacteria from stars including Professor Green and Heston Blumenthal into CHEESE for exhibition
- The cheesemakers have taken bacteria from a number of British celebrities
- Baker Ruby Tandoh and Alex James from Blur among those who have taken part
- The celebrity cheese is part of a new exhibition at the V&A Museum, London
A new exhibit is set to showcase some un-brie-lievable cheese made from the bacteria of British celebrities.
The talented cheesemakers have taken the bacteria from baker Ruby Tandoh, well known cheese-lover Alex James from indie band Blur, Michelin-star chef Heston Blumenthal, rapper Professor Green and singer Suggs.
Helen Steiner and Thomas Meany from Open Cell, a biotechnology firm in London, teamed up with chef John Quilter, known as the Food Busker to make the unique cheese.
The five cheeses are currently maturing at the Open Cell lab in Shepherd’s Bush, with Blumenthal a comte, Jones a Chesire cheese, Tandoh a stilton, Suggs a cheddar and Green a mozzarella.
A stock image showing cheese making in a factory, pressing the whey from the cheese curds
The talented cheesemakers have taken the bacteria from baker Ruby Tandoh, well known cheese-lover Alex James from indie band Blur, Michelin-star chef Heston Blumenthal, rapper Professor Green and singer Suggs
Each celebrity was swabbed in the armpit, ear, nose or belly to be able to get the requisite starter culture to make the cheese, as reported by Atlas Obscura.
About the experiment, Professor Green said: ‘I hate cheese, but I’m here to be made into one.’
The samplings of the unusual cheese will be shown behind climate-controlled glass at the Food: Bigger than the Plate exhibition that opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum later this month.
The exhibit itself is called Selfmade and is one of 70 exhibits looking at the future of food.
The description of the new gastronomic tour-de-force on the V&A Museum says: ‘From gastronomic experiments to urban farming, this exhibition brings together the politics and pleasure of food to ask how the collective choices we make can lead to a more sustainable, just and delicious food future.’
Alex James (pictured left) and Ruby Tandoh (pictured right) will also have their own cheeses on display
Madness frontman Suggs will also have his own cheese. The exhibit is part of the wider exhibition called Food: Bigger than the Plate
Bake off finalist Rudy Tandoh wrote about her experience of being made into cheese for The Guardian, she said: ‘My stilton will sit alongside a cheddar made from Suggs’s bacteria, a Heston Blumenthal blue cheese, a mozzarella made from Professor Green’s germs and a Cheshire cheese courtesy of Alex James.
‘This kind of stubbornly strange, silly, unsterile food antic is right on cue.
‘Errington Cheese, a raw-milk cheesemaker in Scotland, was recently cleared of breaching food safety rules after many months of legal struggle, so acute is our fear of the unpasteurised and the ‘unclean.’