Why do so many weep over dying baby penguins but howl with laughter as celebrities gag on body parts of dead animals?
With typical passion, our columnist accuses millions of us of hypocrisy...
THEY’RE the nation’s sweethearts. Holly Willoughby, with her flaxen hair, Twiglet limbs, smile as sunny as Australia’s Gold Coast. And Declan Donnelly, as cuddly as a koala. The banter they trade hosting I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, ITV’s top-rated show (11 million tuned in for the first episode), have made them a modern-day Morecambe and Wise. Safe. Nice. Loved.
Except, during a bush tucker trial on Wednesday night, something snapped, and the synthetic wool was pulled from my eyes. What I witnessed made me wonder whether we have returned to an age when it was thought acceptable to watch bearbaiting, hare-coursing and cock-fighting.
The trial, to win meals for the ‘starving’ celebrities back in camp (I’ve been to Somalia; trust me, they’re not starving), entailed the predictable consumption of all things revolting. Insects, sometimes still alive. Meal worms. Witchetty grubs. So far, so disgusting.
What enraged me most was Holly and Dec doubled up, convulsing with laughter as animals’ private parts – sheep testicles, anuses and penises, as well as pig snouts and fish eyes – were consumed in the name of entertainment. Oh ho, bloody ho.
They were watching on, barely containing their mirth, as two ‘stars’ – Coronation Street’s Sair Khan and Malique Thompson-Dwyer from Hollyoaks – were sniffing, chewing and gagging on what were once parts of live, sentient creatures.
The grossest morsel on offer was the hoof of a camel, which Khan tucked into, barely turning a glossy hair. Surely camels, the horses of the East, the builder of Empires, the bravest in wartime, do not deserve such a sorry, undignified end.
As well as admonishing the presenters, I want to heap shame on these two young actors who are so un- self- aware they’re happy to condone pain inflicted upon others. Shame, too, on fellow contestant Fleur East, who abandoned her veganism – as short-lived as a male chick on an egg farm – in order to collect her cheque. Asked by a tabloid if she’d eat a kangaroo’s ‘bits’, she replied: ‘Yeah, I could make room for those.’
Shame, too, on John Barrowman, champion of gay rights, but who, on Thursday night, called a mud crab ‘You son of a bitch.’ A mud crab.
Celebrity MasterChef and its ilk are upsetting enough to me, as a vegan, but at least the chefs on these programmes give the poor creatures forced to give up their lives some respect. They’re not cackling. They talk, always, of using ‘every part of the animal’. But on I’m A Celeb, one pig snout is consumed, the others tossed in a bin. Wasteful, yes. Callous, certainly.
Should I simply lighten up? Remember how ‘humourless’ we vegans were accused of being for persuading Waitrose to sack its magazine editor William Sitwell for saying, in an email, we should be killed, ‘one by one’?
Yes, OK, I admit we’re pretty mirthless, as I’m sure Suffragettes were. But there isn’t a great deal to laugh about in the fact that last month alone, 2.5 million sheep, pigs and cattle were slaughtered in the UK??.
What I find even more perverse than Holly’s giggles is that, over on BBC1, t he nation i s addicted (6.8 million viewers) to Dynasties, a series where David Attenborough, crouched in a hedge, tells us moving stories about animal families.
After a programme featuring emperor penguins was broadcast, there was a storm of Twitter tears, with headlines along the lines of: ‘What makes grown men cry? The baby penguins on Dynasties.’
There was further grief (‘ I’m absolutely sobbing!’ tweeted one viewer) when the episode about a pride of lions in Kenya was broadcast. Two young lions, Sienna and Alan, were seen in agony, having been poisoned by farmers.
The BBC crew – who must have surely seen it all – were moved to intervene, summoning a vet. Many viewers reported feeling ‘bleak’.
All of which makes me wonder, were a Martian to land tomorrow, and switch on the TV, what he would make of two almost equally popular pri me t i me TV pro - grammes, and their wildly opposing treatment of animals.
Why the lions are given names, and revered, and mourned, when the sheep have the indignity of their penises being shoved into the mouths of soap stars? Given the huge numbers of viewers, there must be millions who watch both, surely? How do they possibly square the two?
I email the philosopher Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, Laureate Professor at Melbourne, author of the seminal Animal Liberation, and the man who popularised the term ‘speciesism’ in the mid-1970s, believing it akin to racism. I ask him why people laugh at the idea of eating domestic animals, but care deeply about lions and penguins.
He explains: ‘Partly because lion cubs and penguins are cute, they appeal to us, and adult sheep, pigs and camels don’t. And they did not see the whole animal. But I was told that when a Polish supermarket chain started selling whole vacuum-packed piglets, there was such a negative response from consumers they had to take them off the shelves. We are reacting with our emotions, not with our heads.’
I call Ingrid Newkirk, founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), and ask why there was so much laughter on I’m A Celeb over something so distasteful. ‘It’s childish, a failure to understand that the object of their giggling died a bad death,’ she says, blaming the producers more than the stars for ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ to boost ratings. I agree with both pillars of the animal rights movement, but I also feel we cry over lion cubs not pigs because we fetishise t he rare, which is insane: it’s not a pig’ s fault she’s ‘common’. It’s this cult of the endangered that means Prince William can on the one hand plead the case of the African elephant, and blast pheasant and grouse to oblivion with the other. Which is myopic, to say the least, because the plight of farm animals is far worse than the plight of any wild creature.
At least the lion or penguin had freedom, however short-lived. And in fact the suffering of a chicken is worse, because it is multiplied millions of times over. If you were to drive the length of Peru, as I have, and smelled the chicken farms that stretch for hundreds of miles, imprisoning poor creatures who never see the light of day, I doubt you’d ever eat chicken, or laugh, again. I’d also argue that farm
animals are as cute as a cub or a baby penguin; you only have to look at the face of a shocked lamb being shorn in an exposé by Peta to see how beautiful they are and to know they feel pain and fear.
Pigs are as intelligent as dogs and certainly more intelligent than most ITV presenters.
But I agree with Prof Singer that the problem lies in the fact that we don’t see the animals on I’m A Celeb… as ‘whole’. Which makes me wish, as well as the ‘after’ programme on ITV2, they had the courage to screen the ‘before’: the wild crocs and snakes being trapped and placed in tanks to be terrified in the presence of flailing humans; the sheep and pigs and camels lining up to be slaughtered before going on air. How about asking Attenborough to co-host alongside Scarlett Moffatt from the depths of a typical super-farm, both crouched in excrement, which is how most of these animals are kept.
The fact I’m a Celeb… is on primetime TV is a national disgrace, and I wonder why Australia, which protects its wildlife so vehemently it bans tourists from even picking up shells in its national parks, allows itself to be portrayed as a playground, its pristine jungle debased, and giggled at.
I don’t expect millions of people to give up eating meat and dairy overnight – UK vegans may have quadrupled since 2014, but the number still only hovers around 600,000 – but the least we could do is boycott this TV show, as we boycott the humiliation of orcas in theme parks, meaning it would soon go the way of The Black And White Minstrels.
In a supposedly new age when we’re learning to respect each other, surely we need to respect the animals we share this planet with, too. And who knows? Maybe Holly and Dec will have to find another way to line their pockets with millions. And be laughing on the other side of their smug faces.