It’s not just Ashya King’s parents who the authorities despise

My first act upon returning from my holiday was to sign the online petition to have the supremely irritating children’s cartoon figure Peppa Pig banned from television. I have always found the creature half-witted, arrogant and sinister, and the tune which accompanies her exploits is both grating and didactic. Further, even allowing for the usual anthropomorphic licence employed by cartoonists, this Peppa does not remotely resemble a proper pig, and her snout is worryingly two-dimensional. She gave me hours of misery when my daughter was a toddler, although not quite so much as Balamory — a programme which made me feel physically unwell.

The Ban Peppa petition was got up by some Muslim bloke in vibrant and diverse (except for Israelis, natch) Bradford, who was deeply distressed to find his young son watching the show on TV. Hitherto, the father explained in despair, his son had expressed a wish to become a doctor in later life — ‘but now he wants to be a pig’.