Michael Palin’s Monty Python accountant wanted to be a ‘lion-tamer’. The glamour, the danger, the spotlights, ahhhhhh. Ok, he didn’t exactly know what a lion-tamer was or did, but that’s not the point. The point is: do we need lion-tamers? As we go about our daily lives, are we enriched in any way shape or form by people who, basically, beat lions and tigers into submission? Though are our lives enriched by traffic wardens, tax officers, telesales-bastards or Arsenal fans?

Ahhh, but the kids love it. They say.

Lions and tigers aren’t naturally ‘tame’. They’re wild animals. Like Russians. They don’t know right from wrong, they only know eat, fuck, shit. Ok, Russians know ‘hack’ and ‘murder’ too, so they’re a little better. So to make a lion ‘tame’ you have to use conditioning. The carrot and the stick. Punish bad behaviour, reward good. Rocket science it ain’t. Every time the lion bites someone to death, you hit it with a little stick, and every time it kisses you on the lips it gets a piece of road-kill you picked up on the way to the ‘office’. Easy peasy. Ish. Its still a fucking lion, however many fox spleens its eaten today.

Thomas Chipperfield is from a long line of lion tamers. He really does come from a ‘circus family’, literally, not euphemistically. They’ve been taming lions since 1874 or some such. And now Thomas has applied for the official, government lion-tamer license. Like a pilot’s license but without the plane. You have to parallel park a lion, reverse it round a corner and good luck with the emergency stop. But then he’d be the only licensed lion-tamer in the country(!!!!). Wow!

The problem is not really the ‘taming’ but with the fact that in between training and performing, the lion lives in a lorry trailer. The size of… of a lorry trailer. Not very big. Smaller than the veldt, not as big as the pampas, a touch shy of the jungles of Africa. A fucking trailer. King of the beasts. And that’s wrong. I hate zoos, and I hate circus animals. Not fair. Horrible. They’re arguably better off at the butchers’. I’ve always been upset by animals in captivity, even as a kid it seemed ‘wrong’.

I should be a vegan. And in many ways I am. Other than the meat eating bit. Fish. Eggs. Milk. Cheese. More meat…

Happy Thursday

A xxxx