大象传媒

Jay Rayner gets serious and sybaritic about pigs - starting with medieval Britain swarming with wild boars and ending with 21st century pigs cannibalised for human spare parts.

Jay muses on recent rumours surrounding a certain Prime Minister and a pigs head. Does the pig-image make it all the more taboo? This is the extraordinary and, at times, shocking tale of our relationship with the allegedly filthy animal.

The archive groans and grunts with pig - much of it anthropomorphic, some fact and some fiction.

Remember the Tamworth Two who escaped a Wiltshire abattoir in 1998 and went on the run? They were renamed Butch and Sundance and their intelligence was celebrated by the world's press. Rescued by a popular tabloid, they escaped the slaughterhouse. Jay Rayner, on the other hand, has dutifully been to see pigs killed and dealt with the carcasses.

Animal lovers beware - this portrait of our fellow omnivores is controversial. Jay is a non-observant Jew who loves pork - he cooks it, eats it, reviews it, reveres it.

Jay also considers pig as man's best friend, delighting in the poetry of Dylan Thomas and in another pig fancier, Winston Churchill. The upper classes have always loved their pigs.

In the hands of George Orwell however, the intelligence of the pig makes for some dark meat. And Jay hears from comedian Aatif Nawaz who explains why his mother can't even say the word 'p*g.'

Plenty here about the pigs' fitness for cannibalizing human spare parts too. Our porcine friends share some startling similarities to humans, including the size and pumping capacities of their hearts.

Produced by Sarah Cuddon
A Testbed production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.