People who hunt big game are evil…. but here’s why they are necessary
WE are a nation of animal lovers. We will take our dogs for a walk even when it’s pouring with rain or hot enough to melt railway lines.
And if a cat lover was down to her last £1, she’d spend it on food for Tiddles, rather than herself.
Every day, we read about people being cruel and horrible to other people and we turn the page.
But when we hear that someone has been cruel to a horse, or a badger, or even an earwig, we are consumed with an immediate need to put his head in a paper bag and bludgeon him to death.
That’s why Boris Johnson (remember him) received universal support in 2019 for pledging to end the practice of big-game hunters bringing back the severed heads of animals they’d shot in Africa.
I was so supportive, in fact, that I went outside and banged my frying pans together, like we used to do for the nurses.
Because I just cannot understand why anyone could go to Botswana to shoot a lion or a giraffe.
It simply doesn’t compute in my head.
If I caught anyone shooting a rhino, I’d insert its horn in him.
However, there’s a problem.
Because as the House of Lords debated the ban on severed heads this week, six African governments wrote to The Times newspaper begging them to let the hunting continue.
And they have a point.
They argue the big, wild animals in Africa often attack villagers and trample crops.
They are seen as a nuisance and are often shot by farmers.
But if a rich white hunter arrives on the scene and is prepared to pay upwards of £20,000 to shoot an animal, it’s suddenly worth the farmer’s while to make sure he has something to shoot at.
So instead of killing the wildlife, he starts to protect it.
Because he’s going to get a LOT more money from Hank the Texan dentist than he is from half an acre of maize.
Remember when Cecil the lion was shot?
No moral fibre
This was considered to be completely barbaric by everyone — including me.
But the fact is that the rich white hunters who do this kind of thing are actually paying for the animals to be protected and looked after beforehand by the locals.
They’re even reintroducing rhinos to areas they haven’t been seen in for decades.
I know this. I’ve been to a park and witnessed it happening.
And I’ve met the locals who patrol the area at night, hunting the poachers.
If hunting was banned, all that would stop.
So it’s a weird conclusion but if a halfwit with way more money than sense and no moral fibre at all wants to fly to Africa to shoot an elephant, the kindest thing we can do as a nation of animal lovers is . . . let him.
I’ll take Jack Reacher over City gent
WE were told in The Sun this week that men want to be Jack Grealish.
So I studied a photograph of him celebrating the success Manchester City have bought this year, and he seemed to be in a nightclub wearing a necklace and black silk pyjamas.
So, actually, I don’t want to be Jack Grealish.
Jack Reacher, perhaps, but not Grealish.
Raise a glass to win
LAST year, my local council served me with an enforcement notice.
It said I must close the café I’d opened on my farm and remove from the farm shop the mobile burger van, the tables and chairs, the bar, the lavatories and even the plants.
I know. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to have plants on a farm either.
Which is why I launched an immediate appeal.
And this week, I learned that I’d won.
Sure, the report says I can’t have the separate café I’d opened in the middle of a field, but it says I can have one at the farm shop, which is way more convenient.
It even says I can have a car park and a bar.
This is great news, not just for me and the 17 people who work at the shop, but for all the struggling farmers in the Cotswolds because I now have a solid base where I can sell their beef and pork and milk and eggs and potatoes.
And it’s great news for people in the nearby village because customers will no longer have to park on the road.
So I look forward to welcoming you all to Diddly Squat Farm as soon as possible, so we can sit in the sunshine, with a glass of Hawkstone and toast a genuine victory for common sense.
An old bonger
PEOPLE became very steamed up this week after a photograph emerged of Boris Johnson driving along while apparently not wearing a seatbelt.
I couldn’t care less about that.
It’s his face that’ll go through the windscreen, not mine.
What I did care about is that the man – a former motoring correspondent for GQ magazine – is STILL driving around his ancient Toyota Previa.
This was a truly terrible car when it was new, but now, after 30 years in the hands of the untidiest man in the world, it must be heroically awful.
And full of so many squeaks and rattles that the driver is unable to hear the constant bonging telling him to put his seatbelt on.
Curry is king
SOME foodie people, who live in a parallel universe to the rest of us, have decided that the absolute best restaurant in Britain is in Wales.
It is three hours from anywhere, the 30-course set menu costs £375 and the music is played so loud that no one can hear anything anyone says.
Obviously, I applaud the chef’s decision to provide no vegetarian options.
But I’m sorry, £375 is a huge amount of money and if I tried to get through 30 courses I’d end up doing a Mr Creosote.
Which is why I still maintain the best restaurant in Britain is actually a curry house called Durbar on Hereford Road in West London.
Flock wallpaper. Seashell napkins. A sitar soundtrack and the nicest chicken madras in the world.
Italy’s art of smart
WE were told this week that an American actress called Zendaya (me neither) was turned away from a restaurant in Rome because they have a “smart casual” dress-code policy, and she didn’t match up.
I can reveal, however, that even though I wasn’t there and have never been to the restaurant in question, the story is nonsense.
Partly because no establishment in Rome is ever going to refuse to serve an actress who looks like Zendaya.
She could defecate in the fish tank and they’d still let her in.
Mostly though, the story is obvious nonsense because there is no such thing in Italy as a “smart casual” dress policy.
All Italians are smart casual all of the time.
They are born in sunglasses and loafers.
Looking good over there is more important than looking where you’re going.
So telling them that tracksuits aren’t allowed is unnecessary.
It’d be like putting up a sign in a California restaurant saying, “no masturbating”.
I know. I wasn’t going to anyway.