Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 19 September 2009

Is there any other country that could get into such a tizz about the slaughter of a sheep?

issue 19 September 2009

RIP, then, Marcus the sheep. That’s ‘P’ as a plural in this case, obviously. As in ‘pieces’, and lots of them. Are any of the legs still going spare? Mmm. Love a bit of shank.

Marcus, as you’ll have doubtless read, was a sheep reared at Lydd Primary School in Romney Marsh who was then sent off, as is the basic idea with sheep, for slaughter and butchery. All sorts of people were very upset about this. Not the children, it must be said, because they had a vote on this, and they did not choose life. Maybe not even Marcus himself, who by all accounts was a rather stoic and passive individual, because he was a sheep. No, it was mainly parents, who presumably preferred their meat to come in packets. And, in a late final-hour intervention, the comedian Paul O’Grady, who offered to adopt Marcus and take him home.

O’Grady’s timing was a little out on this, in that he brought his considerable gravitas into play on the same day that Sir Elton John started making noises about wanting to adopt a 14-month-old Ukrainian orphan called Lev.

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