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Left: Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as prime minister. Right: some bananas.
Left: Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as prime minister. Right: some bananas.

PoliticsFebruary 20, 2020

EXCLUSIVE: Jacinda Ardern ‘offered me a banana’, says man

Left: Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as prime minister. Right: some bananas.
Left: Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as prime minister. Right: some bananas.

Fresh on the heels of this morning’s news about the prime minister handing someone a bottle opener, The Spinoff can reveal that Jacinda Ardern once offered a man a banana. 

Jacinda Ardern once offered an Auckland man a banana, according to a tweet viewed by The Spinoff.

The MP who would go on to become prime minister offered the man a banana “one time”.

The Twitter user, André Alessi, said in his tweet: “One time I met @jacindaardern at the Grey Lynn Festival and she offered me a banana.”

He went on to suggest that on that basis, she had his vote, saying: “On that basis, she has my vote.”

The tweet, which has not to date been reported in the media, was posted on August 22, 2013, four years before Ardern became the leader of the Labour Party. She would go on to become the prime minister, which is what she is now.

The Spinoff approached Alessi to confirm whether he accepted the banana, and if so whether it was a good banana, an average banana, or not a good banana at all.

“I gratefully accepted the banana,” Alessi exclusively told The Spinoff.

“It was a little on the small side, but other than that, definitely in my top 30 bananas.”

A banana is a fruit, typically yellow and imported to New Zealand. In strict botanical terms, a banana is a berry.

The Grey Lynn Festival is a festival held annually in Grey Lynn.

Grey Lynn is a suburb in Auckland, which is a city in New Zealand, a country of which Jacinda Ardern is the prime minister.

At the time of writing the banana tweet had no retweets and two likes.

It’s not the first time Ardern and family have made banana-based news. Ardern’s fiance, fish hunter Clarke Gayford, once revealed that parenting Neve, who was formerly a baby and is now a toddler, had taught them that “banana stains”.

The Spinoff revelations follow this morning’s scoop on Newshub that the prime minister handed a bottle opener to a man who wanted a bottle opener so he could open a bottle.

The man had taken to Twitter after being in an airport lounge when Jacinda Ardern handed him a bottle opener, according to the story, which was leading the site this morning, and which prompted Judith Collins to do her own tweet about getting handed a bottle opener, which mostly seemed weird because it was 8.17am so that must have been one sick bender.

It’s not the first time the prime minister had made headlines in 2020. She was also in the media spotlight recently when she politely disagreed with someone on Instagram.

If you’ve spotted a social media post which reveals the prime minister to have done a thing, email info@thespinoff.

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