I am starting up a blog on celebrities and was mulling the idea of unique content around in my head. I remembered something from school where the word 'the' was repeated and a few extra vowels were thrown in but people didn't notice due to the way our brains work.

If you did this to an article would it pass Google for unique content?

Google doesn't determine unique content article by article. Google determines unique content web page by web page - everything you can select by pressing CTRL+A

Here's a tool to compare your articles
hxtp://www.dupecop.com/duplicate-content-checker.php

you can also use copyscape.com

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don't get hung up on unique.
you can make 1million not-unique pages as fast as you can make one unique one.
so try both and see what works.

Both work

Just get a good article rewriter and spin the articles a little. A really good one is Power Article Rewriter. If you need ideas for articles try Instant Article Wizard for research. Another technique would be to find articles in other languages and translate them into English using a free online translator. You might have to rewrite it a little to make sense, but it will be a totally unique article in the eyes of the spiders.

Thanks to all that answered my question. I love these forums!