Baked Bean Museum of Excellence and Captain Beany

Perhaps you have a can of baked beans in your kitchen cabinet. There is one place in Wales where baked beans have taken over the place. At the Baked Bean Museum of Excellence in Port Talbot there are 200 items that pay tribute to this every person's foodstuff. The guy who owns this museum, Captain Beany (I kid you not, this is his legal name) filled a two-bedroom flat with cans of baked beans of various sizes and baked bean paraphernalia as a way to draw attention to his fundraising efforts and earn his place on the list of eccentrics who do good work. Plus, the museum is a tribute to the concept that just about anything can be interesting.

Captain Beany's love of baked beans started somehow with the music group The Who and the photo of Roger Daltry that was taken while he was sitting in a bathtub of baked beans and used for the 1960s album cover The Who Sell Out. Inspired, Captain Beany, (then Barry Kirk) sat in his own bathtub of baked beans in the Aberavon Beach Hotel lobby in Port Talbot in a fundraising stunt. There's a lot to this guy who has transformed himself into an oddball superhero. He's earned awards from the department of tourism for promoting his town. If you go to the museum you get a personally signed certificate that says you were there.

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Food and Drink, Europe