AMF ADVISORS BLOG
The Weirdest Insurance Policies Ever Written
A comedian’s teeth. A winemaker’s nose. An alien abduction. Insurance exists to price risk — and some of the risks people have actually paid to cover are stranger than anything a novelist would invent.
Insurance is, at bottom, a bet: you pay a premium based on how likely something bad is to happen, and the insurer pays out if it does. Usually that means a house, a car, or a life. But the same math works on almost anything, if someone is willing to underwrite it — which is how a handful of real, documented policies ended up covering a comedian’s teeth, a coffee taster’s tongue, and the possibility of alien abduction. Here are eight of the strangest, all real and all sourced.
1. The Coffee Taster's Tongue
Gennaro Pelliccia was Costa Coffee’s master taster — the person responsible for quality-checking every batch of coffee the chain served. His employer insured his tongue and taste buds for £10 million through Lloyd’s of London, working out to roughly £1,000 per taste bud. It sounds like a stunt, but the underlying logic is ordinary key-person insurance: if the one person whose palate the whole business depends on loses their sense of taste, that’s a real, quantifiable loss.
2. The Winemaker's Nose
Dutch winemaker Ilja Gort insured his nose for €5 million, co-underwritten by a Lloyd’s syndicate and Allianz. For a vintner whose entire profession depends on a working sense of smell, the policy makes practical sense — but the exclusions are the fun part: the coverage explicitly ruled out damage from “incompetent barbers,” fire-breathing, and motorcycling.
3. The Dancer's Legs
Riverdance and Lord of the Dance star Michael Flatley insured his legs for £25 million through Lloyd’s of London — a figure Flatley himself later confirmed as one of the few true rumors written about him. Given that his entire stage career, and the box office behind it, rested on his ability to dance, the policy was less eccentric than it sounds: it was straightforward business insurance on his one irreplaceable asset.
4. The Comedian's Teeth
British comedian Ken Dodd was famous for his prominent, protruding teeth — a signature part of his act. In 1957 he insured them for £10,000 through a Birmingham broker, at a premium of £25 a year, with conditions that read like part of the joke: he had to brush three times a day with an approved toothpaste, and he wasn’t allowed to eat rock candy.
5. The Athlete's Hair
NFL safety Troy Polamalu was as well known for his enormous mane of hair as for his play on the field — enough that Head & Shoulders, which used his hair in its advertising, took out a $1 million policy on it through Lloyd’s of London. It’s a clean example of a brand insuring the literal physical asset behind its own marketing campaign.
6. Alien Abduction Insurance
This one is real, not an urban legend: the first alien abduction policy was sold by a Florida company in 1987 for $19.95, promising a $10 million payout. A Florida broker still sells a version of it today — $19.95 to $24.95, structured to pay out $1 a year for 10 million years rather than a lump sum. The agency says it has sold nearly 6,000 policies and paid exactly one claim: $1 a year for a decade, to a claimant who presented an “implant” an MIT professor said wasn’t made of any earthly material.
7. A £1 Million Bet on the Loch Ness Monster
In 1971, whisky brand Cutty Sark offered a £1 million reward to anyone who could capture the Loch Ness Monster, and Lloyd’s of London actually underwrote the risk. The catch: any specimen over 20 feet long had to be verified by the Natural History Museum — and Lloyd’s insisted on keeping the monster itself as part of the deal. Nobody ever collected.
8. Hole-in-One Insurance: The Real Industry Behind the Jokes
Behind the novelty policies is a genuinely useful, entirely ordinary insurance niche: prize indemnity insurance. Golf tournaments, half-court basketball promotions, and game shows pay a premium calculated on the real statistical odds of a prize-triggering event — a hole-in-one on a given par-3 is roughly a 1-in-12,500 shot for an amateur golfer. If nobody wins, the insurer keeps the premium. If someone does, the insurer pays out, letting the event offer a prize far bigger than it could ever self-fund. It’s the exact same logic as insuring a comedian’s teeth — just wearing a business suit instead of a punchline.
None of these policies are jokes to the people who bought them — a taster who loses his palate, a dancer who injures his legs, or an event that has to pay out a prize it can’t cover is a real financial loss. What makes them fun is just how literally insurance can price anything, as long as somebody’s willing to run the numbers. The instinct behind a £10 million tongue policy and a small business’s general liability coverage is exactly the same: figure out what you can’t afford to lose, and price the risk of losing it.
Know What's Actually at Risk in Your Business
You probably don’t need to insure a tongue. But knowing what your business genuinely can’t afford to lose — and having the books to prove it — is exactly the kind of clarity AMF Advisors helps small businesses build. Whatever you’re insuring against, our Financial Reporting keeps the real numbers behind your business clear. For more financial oddities, see the weird history of money and legendary product flops.