From the oldest pub in Britain to the most stupidly named pub in Britain

Should one of the oldest pubs in Britain – ‘Ye Olde Fighting Cocks’ – really change its name to ‘Ye Olde Clever Cocks’? This is what the animal rights organisation Peta is proposing, after deciding that the pub – which has had the same name since 1872 – should choose to celebrate ‘intelligent, sensitive chickens’.

Thinking about where your food comes from is one thing, but is pretending that cockfighting never existed, and re-writing the history of this country, really the best way of encouraging people to do that? The pub landlord, Christo Tofalli, told Vanessa Feltz on Radio 2 earlier today that he agrees that ‘chickens are cool’, but alas for Peta, a name change isn’t on the cards. The original letter-writer, Dawn Carr, responded by saying: ‘Imagine a pub that had a name that brought to mind child labour, or the force-feeding of suffragettes… there would be outrage’.

I bet every ‘Fox and Hounds’ in the country is quaking in its boots.