Heh, yeah, bit of a weird one: Allegedly—and you always have to specify “allegedly” when someone may or may not have fucked a pig, because you can get sued for saying someone fucked a pig, especially when they didn’t fuck a pig—but allegedly, our noble and honorable leader, prime minister David Cameron, once fucked a pig. Well, “fucked.” “Fucked” contains magnitudes, doesn’t it? “Fucked” encompasses a whole gamut of sexual experiences. Would I say putting your limp penis in the mouth of a dead pig for a sort of jovial Tory uni-dare constitutes “fucking” it? I would not. But on days like this the English language feels like a blunt tool with which to describe the sharp majesty of events, like trying to perform open heart surgery with a piece of flint, or split the atom with a brick.
And so we find ourselves enjoying arguably the greatest day in British history. For the uninitiated: Last night the Daily Mail published extracts from Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft’s unauthorized biography of David Cameron, which alleged that, at Oxford, he took drugs (listen, we’ve all been young), listened to Supertramp (listen, we’ve all been young) and—and remember that we’ve all once been young—put his penis in the mouth of a severed pig’s head while someone took a photo, as some sort of initiation into the Piers Gaveston Dining Club.
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“The authors report an account of an ‘outrageous initiation ceremony’ at a Piers Gaveston event at which the future prime minister ‘inserted a private part of his anatomy’ into a dead pig’s mouth,” the Mail reported. “The story was recounted to them by a contemporary of Mr. Cameron who went on to become an MP—and who claims that another member of the group has photographic evidence to prove it.” That’s Gideon, isn’t it? That has to be Gideon. Question: How often do you think Gideon gets that photo out of the loft and just gazes at it, tumescent and delighted? I’m saying it’s weekly, minimum. Hold on, wait: allegedly.
Imagine: Samantha Cameron, arms firmly folded while sitting primly on a chaise longue, just absolutely furious. Imagine: David Cameron, keenly ignoring the phone, on his hands and knees. “No, Samantha,” he’s saying. “I never fucked a pig.” Imagine: the year is 2017, and David Cameron’s son uses the internet for the first time. Imagine: the entire Conservative press team at 11 PM last night, all drawing straws to see who will make the phone call. “Hi, David,” an intern is saying. “Yeah, I know this is when you usually watch your Antiques Roadshow re-runs. It’s just… Lord Ashcroft told the Daily Mail you fucked a pig?” They are trying to spin this, they are gazing at a whiteboard saying “PIGFUCKING = AUSTERITY?” and undoing their ties, they are imagining a world where Tessa Jowell is PM instead, and there are tears.
Thing is, did Cameron really do this? Exhibit A: Lord Ashcroft is an exceptional example of a billionaire who has very publicly soured on Cameron since he failed to give him a significant government job after rising to power. Now, if I were a billionaire with a grudge—and here’s hoping I will be one day, having just this morning put my penis in the mouth of a severed pig’s head and taken a shiny photo of it in line with a pact I made with the devil—if I were a billionaire with a grudge, capable of batting off even the most expensive libel legal bills, would I as a joke say the prime minister once fucked a pig’s head? I absolutely would do that thing. Because there is no way Cameron can wiggle out of #piggate without publicly calling a press conference and saying, “I, David Cameron, never put my penis in a pig.” If he doesn’t do that, we will forever have him down as a pigfucker. History will have him down as a pigfucker. Jeremy Corbyn will breeze into the next prime minister’s questions and lean close to the microphone and whisper, “But David, you put your dick in a pig.” And here’s the best thing: Cameron can’t even resign his way out of this, because then he would forever be the prime minister who fucked a pig so hard he had to quit. Burn your copies of Catch-22 and buy Lord Ashcroft’s book about pigfucking instead. This is better.
Personally, I have my doubts. David Cameron is a ruddy-faced Tory bred in a lab to become prime minister. Every single decision he has made in his life—every lesson he attended, job he took—has been made with the end goal of becoming PM. Cameron strikes me as a man who agonized for an hour-and-a-half before taking his first toke on a joint in case it one day got out that he once got mildly high. Would that same man blithely put his penis in the face of a pig skull while someone took a picture? I’m not sure.
But look at Cameron, closer, at his little eyes and his pink face; his high hair line and his tiny Thomas the Tank Engine mouth. All them photos of him hugging pigs. You can imagine it, can’t you? Hear inside your head the high, fluttering peaks of his vocal range: “Samantha, can you get the piccalilli out of the cupboard, please?” It’s that tiny little shred of doubt that will always make us look sideways and go, maybe. David Cameron fucking a pig is no longer beyond the realms of your human imagination. The idea of David Cameron fucking a pig is, finally, something this country can believe in.
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Ashcroft knows this. Ashcroft knows. Ashcroft just Lyndon Johnsonned him. This is the most baller power move a billionaire will pull in this country until Richard Branson finally explodes the moon. Last week, Chelsea FC called an amnesty on training ground banter, and we thought the concept of it was finally dead. But it wasn’t. Lord Ashcroft just resurrected banter from out of the cave in which we buried it three days ago and elevated it to heaven. Lord Ashcroft just made banter into high art. Lord Ashcroft just put the idea in 64 million people’s heads that David Cameron fucked a pig.
This is it: Satire is dead. Charlie Brooker already imagined this scenario four years ago as the most absurd hook an episode of Black Mirror could be hung on, and now it’s real. Satire is never getting up from this. It’s a knockout blow. Even if he did not stick his dick inside a pig, there is no way any of us will ever forget about it until he says the words, “I did not fuck the severed head of a pig.” He can resign, refute, write a book about Lord Ashcroft doing something lewd with a swan, it doesn’t matter. We will forever look at the prime minister of the United Kingdom and think, that is a man whose penis smells of bacon. Allegedly.
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