I usually try and not pile on even those who deserve it when writing this feature. It’s not out of a surfeit of compassion but because I prefer to boldly go where no one  has gone before. It may be the result of watching too much Star Trek, I dunno. There are exceptions to every rule and that is why British Prime Minister David Cameron is malaka of the week.

I was a bit late to the #piggate dance or the Sooey shuffle as they call it in the Ozarks. I had suffered through the Saints mortifying home loss to a piss poor Tampa Bay team along with my Twitter colleagues and fled immediately thereafter. Did I say colleagues? I meant cronies. When I checked later I had what amounted to an assignment from my publisher:

It's Christmas morning, @Adrastosno ! #Piggate

— Allison Hantschel athenae.bsky.social (@Athenae) September 21, 2015

I am never one to shirk my duty as a satirist, especially when it was Athenae’s birthday yesterday. Belated Happy yadda, yadda, yadda, A.

Initially, I was at loss as to what the hell this porcine uproar was all about. It’s about payback from a spurned sponsor. Lord Michael Ashcroft used to be one of the Tory Party’s biggest contributors and helped make Cameron party leader, then Prime Minister. He expected a big job in return but was left at the altar. Payback is a bitch or is that a sow? Ashcroft’s vengeance came in the form of an anti-Cameron book, which was excerpted Sunday in the Daily Mail. Here’s the money passage:

But Cameron went a great deal further. He also got involved in the notorious Oxford dining society, the Piers Gaveston, named after the lover of Edward II, which specialises in bizarre rituals and sexual excess.

 

A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth.

 

The source — himself an MP — first made the allegation out of the blue at a business dinner in June 2014. Lowering his voice, he claimed to have seen photographic evidence of this disgusting ritual.

 

My co-author Isabel Oakeshott and I initially assumed this was a joke. It was therefore a surprise when, some weeks later, the MP repeated the allegation.

 

Some months later, he repeated it a third time, providing a little more detail. The pig’s head, he claimed, had been resting on the lap of a Piers Gaveston society member while Cameron performed the act.

 

The MP also gave us the dimensions of the alleged photograph, and provided the name of the individual who he claims has it in his keeping.

 

The owner, however, has failed to respond to our approaches. Perhaps it is a case of mistaken identity. Yet it is an elaborate story for an otherwise credible figure to invent.

 

Furthermore, there are a number of accounts of pigs’ heads at debauched parties in Cameron’s day. The late Count Gottfried von Bismarck, an Oxford contemporary of Cameron’s, reportedly threw dinner parties featuring the heads of pigs. (He later became notorious after Olivia Channon, daughter of a Tory minister, died of a heroin overdose in his Christ Church bedroom.)

Dead pig head? Oy, just oy. Disgusting thy name is Piers Galveston, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Glen Campbell-Jimmy Webb hit song whatsoever. At least it a-piers not to be the case…

It’s fascinating that animal husbandry and bestiality seems to be associated in the U.K. with such posh people as a descendant of the Iron Chancellor and the Posh Boy himself. In the U.S. we associate it with toothless, moonshine swilling rednecks and Aggies from Texas A&M. Old Etonian David Cameron is clearly in touch with his inner frat boy and may well suffer from Aggie syndrome, which is defined by the Urban Dictionary as follows:

the uncontrollable desire to make love to various members of the animal kingdom, specifically those found in a barnyard. This is named after the Aggie students from Texas Ag & Mech (Texas a&m). Most commonly associated with the humping of sheep.

[Bloggers note: A usage example follows]

Bubba came down with a bad case of Aggie syndrome on a visit to College Station. He and his sheep will be getting married in two weeks due to the pregnancy.