Potato Salad Guy: How a Halifax man eating a giant tub of mash became an internet legend

Listen history was made this weekend when a Halifax man decided to take on quite the feet and eat Riley Mary challenged himself to eat five pounds of potato salad and he planned on doing so at the Holy Cross Cemetery at the grave site of former prime minister Sir John

Sparrow Thompson and of course we are all asking why I know I am so he’s here the man the myth the legend that you’re seeing in those photos right now he is in the global Newsroom Riley AKA potato salad guy is here hello sir hi good morning how’s it going today listen I

Need to ask you that question how are you feeling uh today is a tenfold better than I was the last couple of days but overall it’s been a really good weekend oh my gosh okay so you as we saw in some of those photos you attempted the

Challenge H how first of all h no I don’t even know where to start with these questions why let’s go with why uh plain and simple uh I buy potato salad on the regular uh I didn’t end up getting into eating this uh I’m not really a potato salad fan by any measure

Uh but I realized it was going to expire uh I didn’t have time to reasonably eat it so uh I looked at it saw the expiry date and said that’s a challenge I can do it and so okay so you posted online made just kind of a funny video made the

Posters and this blew up yeah it was uh I probably spent about 45 minutes uh I made a Snapchat uh I made a couple posters uh I didn’t think anything of it uh kind of went to bed when I woke up the next morning people were like is

This real uh so I’ve committed to the bit and I’m sitting here today so and you’re sitting here today just a couple pounds heavier how far into that 5B tub did you officially get officially uh I know online the consensus is 3.5 it was 3.8 we we made it a little bit further

There I and those count yeah that couple extra bites okay so obviously there was a crowd here including police why were police there you didn’t actually get into this uh Cemetery correct no no they um so from my understanding there’s a uh Catholic Council of Nova Scotia

Apparently they own the cemetery so um I won’t I won’t lie uh if I had a family member who was buried next to the Prime Minister I probably wouldn’t want a guy puking potato salad on him uh so I can see why they closed it uh so the police

Were just there for precautionary measures uh they weren’t a problem it was it was a good time all together and uh they made the pictures look better so they did make the pictures look better okay so why the former prime minister though like what’s the connection there

With Benny see I don’t want to say that I don’t fully trust the royal family but there are some suspicious things going on over there um if you guys don’t know about it he died in the Windsor Castle right after being kned by the queen

Herself uh and some people say it was a heart attack uh other people are investigating have questions okay okay all right we’ll leave that we’ll leave that side of the story for the time being um why why do you think that everybody just jumped on board with this

And loved it uh honestly it’s uh we’re kind of in a bit of a pressure cooker right now things in the world are not they’re not great um this is just something that I never intended to have a gathering but if people want to gather around something positive uh bring the

Whole city together uh if I’m going to be potato salad guy and that’s what’s going to happen so be it that that’s what happens gosh okay we need to talk about this this is an incredible painting an oil canvas done by an artist here in Halifax Shannon Dawn there might

Be a little bit of a charity aspect you guys have partnered up potentially yeah so uh we’re very very very very early stages uh nothing’s concrete yet but uh it seems like a lot of people at least general interest in uh maybe buying some prints uh the actual oil campus itself

Will probably be put up for auction uh again neither of us want any funds from this this was completely created out of uh humor so uh out of Good Humor we’re going to try to help some people out here and if uh you guys are interested

In some prints there of the the oil painting uh we’ll try to get them on some t-shirts or whatever amazing Kate you you told Paul and I during the commercial before we came live here that you did some training for this how does one train to eat five l pounds of potato

Salad well as a uh as a man on a budget with absolutely no time to get ready for this uh it involved a lot of Costco hot dogs and a lot of two lers of pop so uh for the most part two Costco hot dogs a

Day and about uh 2 lers of lime big eight pop okay there you go that’s how you train for a marathon of this H caliber here um what’s next are you we’ve we’ve got some we’ve got some of the good stuff here will you ever take a bite of this ever again

Uh there’s a good chance uh I can’t lose to a tub of potato salad uh I can’t let myself go down like that so uh I have no set date yet but there will be round two uh potato salad man is not going to lose to the potato salad just simply not

Going to you heard it here first we will have more when it’s breaking news when the date is announced rley this has been this has been a lot of fun did you have any idea that this is what would come from you not at all I’m uh I mean this

Is definitely something straight out of my type of Playbook but uh no this kind of snowballed and turned into an avalanche and uh I can’t appreciate it more than I am right now this is great amazing well listen we appreciate your time this morning very excited to see

You maybe dig into uh another couple pounds of this not today though we won’t put you through that we’ll let you keep training for maybe a couple months before thank you thank you we’ll uh see you guys in the new year and uh I I won’t lose next time we promise that

Riley Mary right here aka the potato salad guy

Riley Merry, now known in the community as “Potato Salad Guy,” is now something of a Halifax legend after his antics over the weekend drew a crowd to watch him devour a five-pound tub of potato salad. But why did he do it?

“I realized it [the tub] was going to expire, I didn’t have time to reasonably eat it, so I looked at it, saw the expiry date, and said, ‘That’s a challenge. I can do it,’” he told Global News Morning.

Merry joined the Halifax morning show to share the details of how the idea began stewing, if he ever completed the challenge, and to explore why the internet became so enthralled with a man eating potato salad in the rain.

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