US casino company buys stripper's implant

MIAMI - A former stripper once cleared of battering a customer with her enormous breasts sold one of her silicone implants on eBay to the same company that recently bought a grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary.

Internet casino company GoldenPalace.com won the bid for the infamous implant at US$16,766 ($23,150) on Saturday, according to the eBay website and the seller, known professionally as Tawny Peaks. She advertised a 69-HH bra size before her implants were removed in 1999.

There was no word yet on what the on-line gambling company planned to do with the implant.

Last year GoldenPalace paid US$28,000 for a partly eaten, 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich with an image many likened to the Virgin Mary. The company sent the sandwich on a national publicity tour, encased in clear plastic.

Peaks has retired from the entertainment business, and put one of the implants up for auction last week. She said she was overwhelmed and exhausted by the flood of emailed bids.

"It's over and I'm happy," said Peaks, now a homemaker living in the Detroit area.

She won fame in 1998 when a patron at the Diamond Dolls nightclub in Clearwater, Florida, sued her, claiming he suffered a whiplash injury when she swung her breasts into his face. He said they were "like two cement blocks".

The case went to arbitration on The People's Court television show and the judge, former New York City mayor Ed Koch, ordered a female bailiff to examine Peaks in private.

The bailiff found the breasts to be "soft" and to weigh about 0.9kg each. Koch ruled they were not dangerous and refused to award damages.

Peaks said she has since become "kind of a recluse".

"My old fans don't really know what I look like now," she said.

- REUTERS