What’s up, shitsacks? I can tell you for free that engaging with the vegan sphere daily as I do, every step’s an adventure. Former vegan Flat Earthers drinking pee-pee and going on near-naked walkabouts, simpering influencers endorsing Nazi psychopaths, anti-tofu black propaganda – it’s all in a day’s work for the plant-based observer. Expect the unexpected is the working understanding.
So course Liverpool FC legend, part-time soccer pundit and full-time Pogba-baiter Graeme Souness came out as vegan on Sky Sports last Sunday. Let’s immediately state the obvious – few saw this coming. If Leeds United‘s Norman Hunter earned the nickname “bites yer legs” (and he did) then Souness earned his nickname of “pulls your spinal cord through your mouth and flogs your still-twitching corpse with it”. Let’s just say that during his playing career, he was not a man known for empathy with any sentient being, let alone animals.
But every now and then people surprise you and not just in the bad way like the time your borefriend attempted to veganise lamb shanks and wound up in A&E. Let’s jump right in and take a look at those celebrity vegan reveals that left you all “word?”
Table of Contents
1. Amy Mek
When you’re a far-right Jewish anti-Semite, gun nut, Islamophobe and 24-7 hate dispenser, time is at a premium. You’re spinning so many plates, the worry is that you’ll miss one and some marginalised group will go an entire day without you spewing liquid diarrhoea in their face. Shout out to the gals who are trying to have it all. Say hello to Amy Mekelburg.
A feature of Sieg Heil Twitter since 2013, Mekelburg has pumped out white supremacist propaganda, pro-Trump fake news, anti-Muslim hate speech and Obama birther garbage to her 230,000 followers on Twitter as Twitter Support was all “lol whut? I see no ships!” A multifaceted all-round charmer, this one.
But in a bizarre twist, Mekelburg is a vocal ‘for the animals’ vegan since the age of 11, quoting Samuel Butler “Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”
Eh, that’s great. Think we can throw this one back while no one’s looking?
2. Graeme Souness
A man more associated with putting lives in danger than saving them, footballer Graeme Souness tore a swathe through English midfields of the 1970s and 80s piling up trophies like MMA sociopath Jon Jones piles up DUIs before heading back up to his native Northern Britain to engage in the meaningless turd joust that is the Auld Firm‘s hegemony over Scottish football – a move that saw him earn the affection and respect of both sides of the Glasgow divide¹.
Souness took his no-love and no-chill ethic into his punditry career, dishing out brickbats and bitch slaps the way elder abuse survivor Jordung Peterson dishes out inept advice to emotionally crippled incels – frequently, callously and without discrimination.
And yet some say there is another side to Souness. His good friend and former teammate the late Michael Robinson said of his oppo “he still tries very hard not to be this lovely cuddly person, when really he is.”
This view got shocking corroboration in September 2021 when he announced on Sky Sports that he had taken the vegan pill and didnae care what doss c*nt knew it. Remember the name: Graeme “Cuddly Person” Souness. Don’t wear it out.
3. Matthew Scully
At first, Matthew Scully seems like your regular MAGA politico grifting the Beltway feeding troughs for coin and clout. Having worked for Sarah Palin on the John McCain campaign he went on to pen speeches for President George W Bush and other Republican stalwarts like Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence. He would later write last surviving Cylon Melania Trump’s speech for the 2016 Republican National Convention. His seat at the right hand of Beelzebub seemed assured.
But Scully is a committed vegan, to the extent of publishing the 400-page polemic Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy on the evils of animal agriculture from a Christian pro-life point of view. File this one under “complicated legacy”.
Souness announced on Sky Sports that he had taken the vegan pill and didnae care what doss c*nt knew it.
4. Styles P
Rapper Styles P of The Lox has spent most of his life being a terrible disappointment to himself and those around him. Even his run-ins with the law have a half-arsed, phoned-in quality to them – his rap sheet appears to consist solely of stabbing a man in the buttocks. That wouldn’t have even got you in the door at Death Row.
So praise the White Jesus that he at least comes correct with his ethical choices, eating exclusively plant-based since 2013. He uses his New York juice bar chain Juices For Life to help spread an uplifting message to the black community. “Surviving is gangster,” he explained “If the community is eating right, it leads to bright ideas, betterment and enlightenment.”
He has also collaborated with PETA to make a pro-vegan video, easily clocking up enough plant points for us to forbear bringing up If You Think I’m Jiggy.
5. Mac Danzig
Winner of The Ultimate Fighter season 6 and King Of The Cage Lightweight Champion in 2005, Mac Danzig is most definitely about that life, the life in question being dishing out and receiving brain damage, ocular trauma and busted joints for cash and pleasure. Although now retired, Danzig fought 34 times professionally, submission by rear naked choke his speciality.
But Danzig also chokeslams Big Meat into submission, having been vegan since 2004 after working at an animal sanctuary and making that all-important connection between killing someone and their death. “I just don’t understand how anybody can have an animal in their lives that they’ve ever cared about and know that this is going on in these industries and think it’s OK to contribute to it.”
Well, when you put it like that…
6. Rob Zombie
In both his music and his films, Rob Zombie takes an unflinching look at the scary side of the human psyche. Killer clowns, gore whores and satanic suicide stalk his work like Qween of Hearts Princess Diana stalks a married heart surgeon – relentlessly, pathologically and without a single moment’s thought to the harm it will cause.
And yet the horrors of his movies are as nothing to the horrors of factory farming, a fact Zombie acknowledges with his near decade-deep vegan lifestyle.
“Most people are, like, “I don’t wanna think about it!”” he tells GQ, “I know you don’t wanna think about it. It’s horrible. But I can’t live my life not wanting to think about something. You gotta stop and think about things.”
Thinking about things? Now that’s scary.
7. Alec Baldwin
You know Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross. He’s the A.B.C. guy – Always Be Closing. Or perhaps Always Be Cunting off at your 11-year-old daughter. Then there’s Always Be Claiming your insane wife is Spanish when she is actually as American as smallpox blankets. We might even argue Aeroplane Belligerence Constantly after that unfortunate American Airlines incident.
Or try this one for size: Animals’ Boon Companion. Because Glengarry Glen Ross’s Alec Baldwin has been vegan since 2011. Admittedly, it was initially partly for health reasons after being diagnosed as prediabetic but he has also been vocal on ethical motivations, primarily in his 2019 CNN op-ed entitled “The path to a better planet goes across your plate” where he argued, “In wealthier countries, we also need to shift our diets away from rampant overconsumption, notably of meat and toward a nutritious mix of plant-based foods that are less resource-intensive, require less land and are better for our health.”
So perhaps not so “worthless” after all, Kim Jong-il.
Killer clowns, gore whores and satanic suicide stalk Zombie’s work like Qween of Hearts Princess Diana stalks a married heart surgeon
8. Craig Robinson
It’s hard to believe that you could ever respect the choices of Pontiac Bandit Doug Judy. Between 2014 and 2021, Judy terrorised New York stealing over 200 Pontiac automobiles, faked his own death and doublecrossed Jake like a bunch of times.
On the other hand, he did very noisily go vegan in 2017 after losing 50 lbs after dropping the booze and animal products. (50 lbs, that’s 3 ½ stone to our metric martyr British viewers – practically an Olsen twin).
Sounds like he’s just on the health benefits for now but many’s the vogon who switched to add on a few years onto their existence and ended up giving a goddamn. Watch this space.
9. Michael Keene
When you’ve done enough heroin to piss off even death metal rockers it’s safe to say that living your best life is not necessarily top of your priority list. Currently the only member of The Faceless, Michael Keene was accused in 2018 by guitarist Justin McKinney of stealing from both band members and fans, fuelled by his heroin addiction. Keane himself has admitted to insane amounts of horseriding if you will. That guy is a regular equestrian.
But soft! He’s not a complete degenerate. Michael Keene has eschewed animal products for many years, telling the PETA website “Seeing this thing that was living and seeing it dead on a plate, and ripping it apart and putting it in my mouth was so disgusting to me.” So he’d make an excellent dinner party guest – just make sure to pat him down for needles before he uses the bathroom.
10. Barney Greenway
“Oh Black Coun-try, so much to answer for-try…” Far-right vegan loon Morrissey may well have written these words for the death metal scene in the English West Midlands of the late 80s-early 90s that nurtured at its tit such bands as Benediction, Defecation and most significantly of all Napalm Death. Consisting of uncompromising songs of extreme noise and extreme brevity, Napalm Death’s output never struck you as something that would accompany a happy lamb gambolling in the fields.
Perhaps that was the point. Because Napalm Death’s music absolutely could soundtrack scenes from a slaughterhouse, bullfight or dolphin hunt. In any event Napalm Death frontman Barney Greenway has been cocking a deaf ’un to animal products for years now. “Principally, I did it for humane purposes,” he told Blabbermouth “Intensive farming is not sustainable; it can’t continue. So I know the whole planet is gonna have to adapt to a more plant-based diet”.
Like he says in the song Food Chains.
“Strung up, disembowelled right out of the pen.
So unbeknowing in their anonymity.
‘Cause when you’re marked for death,
Ears switch off to the screams.”
They call it meatcore.
11. Fred Durst
It is hard to express to those who weren’t there the havoc wreaked by Fred Durst in the mid-to-late 90s. Heading up a musical movement that was so naff that in comparison hair metal looked hip, coming up with both the worst album title and worst album cover in musical history and cosigning sigma tyrant Vladimir Putin in the hopes of getting a Russian passport, Durst provoked the sort of hostility usually reserved for sex offenders, serial killers like his dad Robert and Mr Brightside.
Another chapter was to be written though in the walking calamity of this man’s life. Fred Durst slid into the DM’s of LIVEKINDLY’s CEO, Jodi Monelle, announced he was now batting for the vegan team and struck a deal where he would eat a bunch of professionally cooked vegan from her for free. OK, now I’ve written that down it doesn’t sound quite as heartwarming BUT STILL. No more hot dog flavoured water for Fred. It’s a win-win.
12. Amy Dumas
The world of professional wrestling is an unforgiving one, for both fans and stars alike. Having their bodies and brains subjected to the kind of relentless assault usually reserved for girlfriends of Stan Collymore, leads them all too often down a path of nihilistic self-destruction. A look at the mortality rate for both active and retired professional wrestlers confirm that their prospects are as bleak as a kamikaze pilot trainee being bullied by his cohorts while listening to Emilie Autumn and taking unlicensed acne medication. It is not a profession for the softhearted.
And yet from those unpromising circumstances came Amy Dumas (pronounced Dumb-ass¹), a rose from the concrete. An ethical vegan for some years, Amy founded the animal shelter charity charity Amy Dumas Operation Rescue and Education (A.D.O.R.E.) in 2003 and has continued to be a vocal animal rights advocate since her retirement from the square circle in 2016. She’s a walking suplex on the cucknivore fallacy and all its diseased failed ideas.
Dumas is a walking suplex on the cucknivore fallacy and all its diseased failed ideas
13. Carlos Cuéllar
For a man supposedly “cruelty-free” Spanish defender Carlos Cuéllar certainly murdered his shares of promising moves in his time with his uncompromising Row-Z-or-death approach to defending. In several iterations of the multiverse, Cuéllar is signed repeatedly by a tailspinning Martin O’Neill on a seemingly infinite loop, O’Neill explaining “Aye but’s he strong in the air so he is”.
But should being a successful but inspiring centre-back and deeply workmanlike right-back preclude Cuéllar from leading an ethical lifestyle? The clear inference you should draw from my tone and other context cues is no. In 2015, Cuéllar watched Forks Over Knives and was out of the cucknivore game quicker than Prince Andrew pressing record when tATu’s All The Things She Said comes on VH1 Classic.
14. Bill Clinton
Oh that slick Willie! There may have been that Monica Lewinsky thing, that rape accusation and his failures in Rwanda but you always knew he was a good old boy at heart. From Little Rock in the beautiful state of Arkansas, Clinton famously loved a pork chop. There was no way that he was ever going to join the malnourished vegan cult right?
Wrong, motherf*ckers! Persuaded by the quadruple bypass he had in 2004 and the stents inserted in 2010, Big Bill went straight on a plant-based diet and hasn’t looked back since. I mean, he probably has fish once in a while on the sly, I can’t be arsed to check. It is Clinton we’re talking about, after all.
15. Boy George
Say the words “Boy George” and it instantly conjures up an image of a terrified sex worker chained to a radiator, naked and bleeding.
“Let me go!” he screams, “I’ll go to the police!”
“Hahahaha!” comes the callous response “Do you know who I am? I’m Boy George. I run this town. You seriously think the police will take the word of a dirty toilet trader over mine? You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’m connected. George Michael, Beverley Craven, Howard from Take That. I know them all and I’ve had them all.”
“I do what I want, I take what I want and God help anyone who gets in my way. There will be some rough justice coming your way if you ever approach the authorities – believe that. Let me give you a bit of advice, son. In life, there are those that dish out the ass whippings and those that receive them. I am in the former category, you are in the latter. Accept that, and things will go a lot easier for you. Rebel and be crushed.”
I’m not getting an attitude about it I’m just saying that befriend Boy George and you’ll be chained to more radiators than Terry Waite, taking more beatings than a Lindsey Buckingham groupie and getting jizzed on more than Taylor Swift‘s training bras when Graham Rix is in town.
But yeah, beyond all that George has been bouncing around between vegetarian and raw vegan for a while now so he’s clearly somewhere on the spectrum in more ways than one.
Befriend Boy George and you’ll be chained to more radiators than Terry Waite, taking more beatings than a Lindsey Buckingham groupie and getting jizzed on more than Taylor Swift‘s training bras when Graham Rix is in town.
16. David Haye
“This fight is going to be as one-sided as a gang rape by a pack of silverback gorillas.” Thus spake David “Hayemaker” Haye before his fight with Fraudley “A-Farce” Embarrasson. It was not a nice thing to say. Victims of actual gang rapes by packs of silverback gorillas spoke up to say that their experiences were a lot more competitive than the three-round mauling Haye put on Fraudley. The lesson was learned.
It was still a surprise when he decided to go vegan in 2014 after researching the best way to heal muscles while injured. It wasn’t even entirely health based. “When you look at the horrible way animals are treated, that made it easier to switch,” he said. It was likely he was thinking about those silverback gorillas cornholed into another dimension by their peers. Or animal husbandry, I dunno.
17. N.O.R.E.
Even among dumbass energy-over-content gangsta rappers, Noreaga (a.k.a. N.O.R.E.) stood out. Running crack on the streets of Queens, New York from the age of eight, he did a three-year bid for attempted murder at 13 where he met his rhyme partner Capone.
A rap career stuffed to the gills with knives, wives, guns and sluts swiftly followed. N.O.R.E. spit bars like “I aim you, so you should just let us be/Or find yourself shot up, in the hospit-ee” and made them work. Disagree? Well, he’d just shoot you up then be all “WHAT?”
So you can imagine the raised eyebrows in hip-hop community when N.O.R.E. quit drinking, took the vegan pill and changed the name of his blog from Hang Hang Hood Chicken blog, to Hang Hang Hood Vegan blogs. It was a bit like learning that Pudgee Tha Phat Bastard was bulimic. He’s gone From Ni**as On the Run Eating to Never Ordering RedMeat EVER.
18. Ovidie
It is safe to say that former adult entertainment performer, director and activist Ovidie has taken her share of bockwurst in her time. By which I mean of course engorged male penis genitalia inside her foof, among other points of entry. In saying this, I attempt to make a connection between the consumption of meat and the consumption of cock dicks. I trust this has been as successful and amusing as it has been original.
Maybe it’s because of that four-year long dong overdose that the lady decided to do a blitz on animal secretions of all kinds. Or, conceivably, her sex-positive feminism led her to a wider critique of intersecting oppressions within the kyriarchy, a critique that inevitably took in speciesism which in turn led to the adoption of veganism? We may never know but we do know is that she does a mean Polish pastry. Not a euphemism.
Conceivably, her sex-positive feminism led her to a wider critique of intersecting oppressions within the kyriarchy, a critique that inevitably took in speciesism which in turn led to the adoption of veganism?
19. Kurt Sutter
They say never judge a book by its cover but that is mainly said by people who do not read. Screenwriter, producer, director Kurt Sutter looks like one of the bikers from his successful Sons of Anarchy TV show – so much so in fact that he plays one of them, Big Otto, last seen getting pumped in the ass on death row before biting off his own tongue and committing suicide by cop. The dark subject matter that pervades his writing is informed by his years of drug and alcohol addiction and mental health issues. Always a handful, he was kicked off his own Sons of Anarchy spin-off The Mayans for being “an abrasive dick” (his words Lynne, not mine).
You know who he’s not an abrasive dick to? The defenceless members of the animal kingdom preyed upon by all those nice guys you see getting all the plaudits and back slaps. He is aware of the irony of the contrast. “I live in two worlds. The right wing, gun-toting, meat-eating, Harley-riding, racist, homophobic, masochistic fantasy dynasty, that is SOA. And the centrist-liberal, anti-gun, vegan, Tesla-driving, gay-priding, civil-minded, pro-choice existence, that is my personal life.” I was going to finish by saying there’s no drug as good as ethical living but we both know that would be a big effing lie. If that has been your experience then I suggest you change your dealer. For real.
20. Lea Michele
Has a whiter more psychopathic white psychopath ever existed? You might reasonably answer Freelee The Banana Girl, Fully Raw Kristina or perhaps Alyse Parker. True, true, I hear that. And yet have any of them been accused of threatening to defecate in a black girl’s wig? Like, I’m not even sure if there’s a racial element there – like, is there a particular resonance for women with Afro hair for the perruquier? Here at Plant Based Savage we’re all for blaming Whitey for pretty much anything but we can’t definitively claim cultural imperialism in this case.
Nonetheless, it was a massively cunty move, a story buttressed by complementary tales of Mean Girls antics that left many saying “wait, don’t you have to be some kind of exceptional talent to be that big a diva? Or at the very least spectacularly attractive? Not a normal world 5/10, Hollywood 2/10 like this dumb broad? What’s going on with that?”
So calculate the confusion when you learn that Lea Michelle is not slaughtering the Iberian Goose by hand but rather saving it by avoiding consumption of all animal products. Godspeed you, wigshitting cracker!
¹ Citation needed