Behind the scenes of the messy politics of Peppa Pig’s world
The PM loves the pink pig – but she’s not the British success story you’d think, says Harry de Quetteville
In my book, the most surprising part of Boris Johnson’s, shall we say, “off-piste” ruminations to the CBI, was that he was “a bit hazy” about the charms of Peppa Pig. Yes, the “vroom vroom” noises may have raised some eyebrows, the shuffling of papers caused consternation, and the muttered apologies lent him the air of a vicar lurching into wedding vows at a funeral. But here is a man whose eldest child, Lara, was conceived almost 30 years ago and whose youngest, Wilfred, turns two next year. In other words, Boris has been parenting the entire span of the cartoon pig’s existence.
And as any parent knows, Peppa goes down a storm with the nippers. How the tiny tots love the snorts and oinks and gentle larks of the anthropomorphic piglet. Not only that but, in the 17 years since she first appeared on our screens, watching Peppa and her animated band has been just about bearable for parents too. Sending up the self-regarding idiocies of middle-class life, it is a show, like pantomime, which charms on many levels.
Now we know that part of its charm is political, too. “Peppa Pig World,” noted the PM, “is very much my kind of place.” No wonder. For a Conservative leader buffeted by mishap and slipping poll ratings, the cartoon’s spin-off theme park in the New Forest, which Boris visited with his youngest son last weekend, must indeed look glorious.
First up, our law-and-order PM praised the show’s “very safe streets”. Priti Patel and Cressida Dick watch out! This is a world in which, when Peppa’s younger brother George loses his toy dinosaur, the police actually care, and even try to locate it, rather than sighing, giving him a crime number and telling him to call his insurance company.
It doesn’t stop there. There is, salivated BJ, “discipline in schools” – though I’m not quite sure Madame Gazelle, Peppa’s form teacher, is Ann Widdecombe’s idea of a hang ’em and flog ’em type. No sign of a cane anywhere. But the very idea is meat and drink to the party base. Like Fatima, of last year’s fatuous government ads, Mrs Rabbit has a new job every episode. Perhaps her next will be in cyber.
What’s there for a Tory PM not to like? You can even get straight through to Doctor Brown Bear – on the second ring! And you know what, once he has sympathetically listened to his patient’s woes, he’ll come out and do a home visit! It’s like all the promises of a Conservative manifesto in delightful primary-coloured, five-minute episodes.
It’s a secret to no one that the whole thing is a cosy nostalgia-fest of nuclearfamily stereotypes, where everyone knows their place and is mildly sent up for liking it there.
Above all, it’s a family show. That’s its whole charm. And not just in Britain, but around the world, where people polled in country after country put family at the very top of the list of things that give their lives meaning.
All in all, rejoiced the PM, it reflects “the power of UK creativity… a pig that looks like a sort of Picasso-like hairdryer… exported to 180 countries. I think that it is pure genius.”
It’s true. Peppa is watched around the world. Her creators, Mark Baker, Neville Astley and Phil Davies, who met at Middlesex Polytechnic in the mid-1980s, have become multimillionaires on the back of her success.
The problem is, it’s not British – at least, not anymore. Their company, ABD, became a subsidiary of the Canadian company Entertainment One in 2015, which explicitly aimed to double sales of Peppa (to $2billion per year) and four years later was itself bought by the US toy-making giant, Hasbro. This year, when seven more years of Peppa programmes were commissioned, ABD “passed the torch” to another studio.
For some, in fact, Peppa is not a fairy tale of British business so much as a cautionary tale – this country coming up with ideas then selling them and letting others make the big bucks. It is the answer often given to explain why Britain, despite all its talent, doesn’t have a tech giant to rival Silicon Valley. Creative genius? Maybe. Small-town business mentality? All too often.
That, perhaps, might have been one boosterish message the PM could have given to the CBI without causing jaws to drop: that under his leadership, Britain would become a place not just to generate ideas, but also to capitalise on them around the world. But he didn’t.
Still, he can take comfort in the fact he’s not the first politician to trip up having co-opted Peppa to his cause. More than a decade ago, Peppa was the poster pig of Sure Start, New Labour’s children’s centres and the party announced she would be making a campaign appearance. Embarrassingly, the production company pulled out. Gordon Brown, while admitting that he and his family were “big fans”, claimed to “understand that she has a very busy schedule and so couldn’t make it”.
Ten days later he was out of Downing Street. Just saying…