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home cooking

Why did the BBC show people skinning and eating squirrels in studio?

Newsnight took a step into slightly more left-field territory last night.

NEWSNIGHT IS ONE of the BBC’s many staples – a current affairs programme par excellence and home for many years to the incomparable Jeremy Paxman.

Why then did it decide to show people cooking and eating a squirrel last night?

It was all to prove a point about man’s odd culinary relationship with certain animals it seems.

Writer and environmentalist George Monbiot, who provoked outrage earlier this week when he revealed he cooked a squirrel he found dead on a road, repeated the feat on Newsnight together with nonplussed presenter James O’Brien.

And this is the result:

BBC Newsnight / YouTube

Why an axe was a necessary implement we cannot say. Apparently however, according to a queasy looking O’Brien at any rate, the rodent tastes something like rabbit.

monb1

monb2

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Monbiot believes that  all farmed meat is basically unethical hence the diversion into roadkill.

And as you might expect the macabre spectacle has provoked a deal of reaction on Twitter, from the:

Amused

… to the…

Incredulous

… to the…

Bemused

… and of course, those who

Agree 100%

Dull television it ain’t.

Read: Glastonbury’s left-behind wellies are being donated to the migrants in Calais

Read: Man ‘trapped in piece of furniture’ in Co Cork

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