This, as you are probably aware, is a horse . . .

It's actually rather a useful pic, being marked with all the different bits of horse, so that you wouldn't mistake them for . . . a beefburger perhaps . . . like those jolly silly chappies in the British food industry.

Apparently, back in dear old Blighty, they're getting terribly worried that bits of horse have been getting into beefburgers, thus rendering the description on the packet . . . wrong. 

Of course it's wrong - Everyone knows that beefburger means "round frozen thing composed of fat, gristle, onions, E-numbers, as much ice as they can get away with, and miscellaneous cack." Eight out of ten bacilli that expressed a preference stated that they preferred the packet.

Having lived in France for some 11 years now, the thing that really intrigues me is: Why are they so worried that someone's found some meat?

 I was deeply shocked the first time that I cooked French beefburgers. They bled. Il y avait du sang partout! These weird, even alien objets were clearly contaminated with beef . . . we only needed one each for a meal because they filled you up.

Of course the French, in some ways, don't take these things so seriously. A restaurant is quite within its rights to serve you steak and chips without being absolutely specific as to whether a cow or a horse donated the requisite pound (or should that be demi-kilo?) of flesh. In terms of averages, you're more likely to eat horse up north or anywhere near Belgium.

 But the whole affair does highlight very well something that I find quite strange about the British: They fill horses up with top quality natural foodstuffs. But it's cruel to eat cute-shaped animals so they sell them to the Belgians. The horses still get eaten. But by Belgians.

Then the British take some un-cute-shaped animals and fill them up with utter shite, such as cows (which are naturally vegetarian) with bits of other cows, because they think that's not cruel, and feed the un-cute-shaped animals to their children.

Then the British get worried because some of the ultra-processed utter shite accidently gets polluted with bits of healthy cute-shaped animal meat.

Only the British could do this . . .

To be honest it's the idiotic sentimentality that really pisses me off. It's OK to eat animals so long as they're not cute-shaped. What kind of consistent moral stance is that? Either you think it's acceptable to eat animals or you don't.

Then there was the English woman I met at a restaurant in Perpignan who ordered un plat du lapin and sent it back because she hadn't realised it was another cute animal - a bunny rabbit.

I couldn't help noticing that she wore a small fur. 

"What fur is that?" I asked, sort of innocently.

"Oh, a rabbit."

"So you will wear it but you won't eat it?"

Mon bloomin' Dieu! I rest my case, m'lud.