Slipping on a banana peel was already considered hackneyed at the beginning of the 20th century. One Variety writer dismissed the gag, in 1909, as having been “so done to death by the funny papers that it is tabooed now entirely as too old.” It had become the kind of groan-inducing cliché that would have seen trembling hopefuls booed offstage at vaudeville open mic nights; the Edwardian era’s equivalent of a sitcom character saying “...he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

Played out or not, the trope went on to feature heavily in the golden age of silent comedy, where it was being subverted from early on: In The High Sign (1921), Buster Keaton casually saunters over a banana peel that an enemy has left out as a trap—the joke being that, contrary to the audience’s expectations, he doesn’t slip. Keaton returned to a more conventional version of the gag several years later in The Cameraman (1928), where he slips on a peel and slides flat onto his back with an almost balletic grace. Since then, successive generations of comedians have continued to strive to do something novel or surprising with the hoariest old cliché in the book.

But while the joke itself has endured, the context that first led to it becoming ubiquitous has not. Slipping on a banana peel was never simply an absurdist gag, but one rooted in a then-familiar social problem: litter. Bananas became a popular snack for the first time in the 1880s, when North American and European cities were growing at a rate that far outpaced their capacity to manage waste. After enjoying a banana, most people would toss the peel into the gutter, and so the streets really were lined with slimy, decomposing skins. Slipping on them was a fairly common hazard—which in some cases proved fatal—and could even be said to be a driver of modern urbanism: In 1903, the death of an elderly man in Bristol after slipping on a banana peel led to the introduction of some of Britain’s first ever public trash cans.

Although accidents still happen today, banana peels are responsible for a far lower body count. Not only are city streets cleaner, but the variety of banana that we eat today (the Cavendish) has a less slippery skin than the kind that was popular at the time of Charlie Chaplin (the Gros Michel, now all but extinct).¹ But even if tossing away a banana peel is less likely to lead to a manslaughter charge or hip replacement surgery, it is a waste to discard such a versatile ingredient, capable of doing everything from flavoring curries and making teas to moisturizing skin, strengthening hair and whitening teeth. The banana peel, which has given us so many groans over the years as a comedy prop, deserves a second act as the next aspirational lifestyle accessory.