Stanley Green

Stanley Owen Green (22 February 1915 – 12 December 1993), known as the "Protein Man", was an English human billboard in central London in the latter half of the 20th century. One writer called him "the most famous non-famous person in London". According to Lynne Truss, Green became such a ubiquitous figure around Oxford Street in the West End that he was "present in every black-and-white picture of London crowds that one has ever seen".

For 25 years, from 1968 until 1993, Green patrolled Oxford Street with a placard recommending "protein wisdom", a low-protein diet that he said would dampen the libido and make people kinder. His 14-page self-published pamphlet, Eight Passion Proteins with Care, went through 84 editions and sold 87,000 copies over 20 years. Green's "campaigning for the suppression of desire", as one writer described it, was not always popular, but Londoners developed an affection for him. The Sunday Times interviewed him in 1985, and the fashion house Red or Dead used his "less passion from less protein" slogan in one of its collections. When he died aged 78, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times all published obituaries, and the Museum of London acquired his pamphlets and placards. In 2006 his biography was included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was shocked while in the Navy by the obsession with sex.

After leaving the Navy in September 1945 having served through the Second World War, Green worked for the Fine Art Society. In March 1946, he failed the entrance exam for the University of London, then worked for Selfridges and the civil service, and as a storeman for Ealing Borough Council. When he died on 12 December 1993 at the age of 78, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times all published obituaries. Other artefacts went to the Gunnersbury Park Museum.

Years after his death Green was still remembered by writers and bloggers. In 2006 he was given an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, In 2013 Martin Gordon included a track about him on his album Include Me Out. He was also the subject of an eponymous biographical song on the Melancholy Thug's album A Trip to the Sewers of Paris (2018). Peter Watts wrote in Londonist in 2016 that Green was for a time "the most famous non-famous person in London, a figure recognised by millions even if few ever actually spoke to him. Oxford Circus has never felt quite the same without him." When Green died, Lynne Truss suggested in The Times that he be inserted retroactively into the final paragraph of Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit:

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