I tried it. It worked, but not as well as in the video. First, the squeezing mushes the tip of the edible stuff. (What is that called? Is it, like the edible part of a nut, the nutmeat, called bananameat? Hmm.) Anyway, the skin split as in the video, but peeling it away was somewhat messy due to the mushed bananameat. Maybe I need more practice. Also, that inedible little black thing that sticks into the end of the banana, which normally stays attached to the skin, detached and had to be removed.

I prefer the method I learned a few years ago from a gorilla while I was watching a TV program about apes. The narrator was explaining something for which there was no useful visual accompaniment, so they just filled the visual space with a clip of a gorilla opening a banana. This gorilla very deliberately stuck his thumbnail into the skin just below the stem, making a slit perpendicular to the stem; then he bent the stem back, away from the slit, and the banana zipped right open. When I tried it, I found that the slit severs a few of the longitudinal strings in the skin that maintain the structure. The stem can then be bent back far enough to put a serious strain on the strings adjacent to the slit, which break; and then the next strings, etc.

Apparently there is more than one way to skin a banana. Consult your local non-human primate.

Mixter