Blighted by the bunny-huggers

SLIPPING OUT of Beelzebub Mansions for a pre-lunch livener at the Dog and Blunkett, I pass the stable block where my man Whittaker is currently living. (Strangely, the yard outside is full of curious metal sculptures and someone’s lit the fire in the old forge.)

He’s got the television on, a smile on his face, and is watching Sky News reporting the death of the whale that swam up the Thames. Beside him, his recently-acquired pet penguin is jumping up and down and clapping its flippers in glee. I suspect there may be some history there.

I have long bemoaned this country’s over-sentimental attitude to animals, and this week proved no exception. There are dozens of people dying daily in Iraq. Thousands of children die every hour around the world from disease and starvation. Yet a bottlenose whale swims up the Thames and the nation grinds to a weeping, wailing halt and hordes of ghoulish sightseers flock to the scene.

Forests of trees are chopped down to provide acres of broadsheet coverage. The 24-hour news channels go into meltdown (“Can you see the whale, Hugh?” “No, it’s 3am and a bit dark, Emily.”) So-called experts emerge from obscurity to draw spurious parallels with the current state of Planet Earth. Japanese restaurants across London urgently summon extra staff.

It’s a fish, for fuck's sake. A big fish. Millions of dull men spend every weekend dangling their hooks in the canal trying to catch one. The only remarkable thing about it is that it’s a bit too big for the freezer.

And I’ll tell you another thing. What happens when you take a fish out of water? It dies, doesn’t it? Every kid who’s ever won a goldfish at the fair knows that. So what do they do? Take it out of the water. And it dies. The mind boggles.

And then we have lunatics like Lorraine Kelly dementedly blathering on GMTV: “Seeing it in front of the House of Commons and Big Ben, it was almost as if it was campaigning.” So Whaley captured the heart of the nation. Truly, she was The People’s Whale. (No, not Lorraine, you idiots.)

Meanwhile our under-resourced police force finds time to stop chasing robbers, rapists and granny-stabbers to pop round to the Big Brother House and arrest a coat allegedly made out of gorilla skin, and a donkey charity in Devon is so awash with money that it’s had to start making solid gold shoes for the beasts and feeding them hay soufflé especially prepared by Michelin-starred chef Hester Blumenthal.

It’s not just daft old ladies who leave their millions to cats’ homes that are to blame for this emotional distortion. The animal rights nutters have played their role as well. Personally, I can’t stand them.

I hate their holier-than-thou attitude towards what I choose to eat and wear. (If God didn’t mean us to eat animals, why did he make them taste of meat?) I hate the way they recruit airheads like Jodie Marsh to argue their cause. I hate the way they intimidate teenage girls into nut roast anorexia. I hate their beards and jumpers knitted out of macrobiotic yoghurt.

I hate it that they send me messages threatening me with violence just because I don’t agree with them. I hate their bullying of legitimate companies and workforces. I hate it when they dig up the remains of someone’s grandma. I hate it when they plant car bombs at the homes of scientists who are only trying to save lives.

And I hate it when they jump out of bushes at the hunt and frighten the horses.

I tell you what. I’ll do a deal with them. The bunny-huggers can continue to protest all they want, but they’re not allowed access to any drugs tested on animals. Got cancer? Well go and suck a dandelion, you lentil-eating lunatic.

I AM writing this before George Galloway and Dennis Rodman get booted out of Celebrity Big Brother as the public extracts their revenge on the Terrible Two. But did you see the Scotch idiot whining on about being denied an eviction vote because he constantly broke the rules?

“I've had my right to vote taken away from me. I will have my revenge on those that did this to me.”

George, forgive me for pointing this out, but you’ve got the right to vote on a daily basis at your so-called place of work. The fact that you can’t be bothered to turn up and use it is entirely up to you.

DESPITE a full and adventurous life, I must confess that I have never “enjoyed” a three-in-a-bed sex with a pair of rent boys. Unlike Mark Oaten, turned over by the News of the World on Sunday.

(And tell me, what was the act so unspeakable that even the NOTW dare not speak its name? Wearing brown shoes in town? Having Austrian blinds in one’s drawing room? Drinking Blue Nun with beef?)

Mr Oaten’s outing provided much fodder for Sunday morning sanctimony, as fellow politicians queued up to lambast the naughty press for ruining this poor man’s perfect family life. Now I couldn’t care less what our elected members get up to in their own time (as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses), but if a senior politician seeking higher office is so irredeemably stupid that he puts his head above the parapet despite having a rent boy in his closet, then I think we should all be told how flawed his judgement is.

UNBEATABLE television of the week comes from Sky Channel 999. “Duck, Duck.” “What is it Dog?” “Can we push the red button?” Yes, Dog.”

Fantastic stuff. I watched it for two hours the other night thinking it was Celebrity Big Brother. Do give it a go. And it’s worth waiting to see what happens when the clown and the nun come on.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone being especially nice to their wife this week just in case she’s the mystery £1.5 million Lottery winner who hasn’t yet told her husband, of anyone who’s rung the Bishop of Borsetshire to complain about Alan and Usha, or of anyone who doesn’t want to strangle the woman caught on telly fiddling her benefits by pretending to be a single mother who said: “Of course Tony is always working, but at the end of the day my children are not his and I don’t expect him to pay for my children. I do that myself.” No, love. I think you’ll find that we do.