FW:(Afgan)Mane attraction

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,606640,00.html

 

Mane attraction

 

This week a Sunday paper boasted that it had 'rescued'

Marjan, Kabul zoo's scruffy lion. It's not the first

time the tabloids have competed to save an animal in

distress. Stephen Moss on Fleet Street's beastliest

battles

 

Tuesday November 27, 2001

The Guardian

 

Rest easy: the lion of Kabul has been saved. And an

anxious nation has the Mail on Sunday to thank. At the

weekend, in a heart-rending report from Kabul's

battered zoo, it announced that it had officially

adopted Marjan the one-eyed lion - not to be confused

with Mullah Omar, the rather less lionised one-eyed

Taliban leader. To prove it, there was a photograph of

his keeper, Shar Agh, clutching a framed sponsorship

form. Now all we have to worry about is finding a

sponsor for Khers, the Afghan black bear whose nose

was cut off by the Taliban for some unknown crime -

watching old David Attenborough videos, perhaps.

There should be no shortage of backers for Khers and

the other 15 animals at the zoo. Animals in distress

are vital weapons in the tabloid media war; animal

correspondents the red-top equivalents of John

Simpson. And the first VC of the campaign goes to the

MoS's Barbara Jones, for ensuring the safety of the

moth-eaten Marjan, who lost an eye when the brother of

a man he had eaten hurled a grenade into his pen. (The

victim was teasing Marjan and had it coming, says

Jones.) There will be much gnashing of teeth in the

war rooms of rival papers at her spectacular démarche.

 

 

The Mail on Sunday, which paid £2,000 to adopt the

lion of Kabul, has always been at the front line of

the animal war. It once sent a reporter to Libya to

rescue a rabbit that had been abandoned when diplomats

fled from the British embassy at the height of one of

the periodic crises in relations between the two

countries. The heroic reporter came back with the

bunny, yet his name appears to have been lost to

journalistic history.

 

One of the most memorable animal war engagements, this

time largely featuring the daily papers, was fought in

1998 when two pigs - the " Tamworth Two " (aka Butch

Cassidy and the Sundance Pig) - escaped from an

abattoir in Wiltshire. They swam the river Avon and

hid for a week in gardens in Malmesbury, sparking a

frenzied media hunt. ITN scrambled its helicopter,

tabloid reporters commandeered four-wheel-drives, and

the Express and Mail went snout to snout in the battle

to claim them.

 

In an extraordinary display of enthusiasm - and to the

astonishment of her bosses - Daily Mail reporter

Barbara Davies organised her own night-time hunt with

a group of villagers, despite freezing rain and

sub-zero temperatures. While the rest of the press

pack explored the local hostelries, Davies cornered

Butch in a wood. He was tranquillised and taken to a

secret location, where the following day he was

reunited with Sundance. Davies, an eager freelance at

the time, was promptly given a staff job for her

tireless pursuit. Meanwhile, in the great tradition of

Fleet Street, the Express claimed the glory too. " We

finish the great hog hunt " , was the headline above a

suspiciously short story by Gerard Greaves - " our man

in the thicket of it " . " Yesterday, the Express

triumphantly rescued Sundance, " he wrote. " Around us

an exhausted band of police and RSPCA officials shared

the Express's sweet moment of victory. " Well,

possibly.

 

Veterans of the boar war still wear their medals with

pride. Steven Morris, now on this paper, also covered

it for the Mail. " It was the biggest story of the time

and I remember getting told off by the news desk for

not taking it sufficiently seriously, " he recalls. " My

role was to buy the pigs off the owner so that it

would all be legal and above board. I managed to find

him and buy them for several hundred pounds, though

they were only worth about a fiver each. There was

then a huge bidding war with Sunday papers offering

tens of thousands of pounds. However, as we had

already secured one of the pigs - and were going to

put exclusive pictures of him in the paper the next

day - we were in a strong position and managed to hang

on to the deal.

 

" At this time, the second pig was still on the loose.

There were TV camera crews circling the woods around

the town trying to spot it. It finally ended up in

someone's garden. The pack spent the whole night

camped around it, and eventually the RSPCA was called

in. They caught the pig and took it to a local vet. We

were able to prove we owned both pigs and reunite

them. On a subsequent day, I managed to trace the

family tree of the pigs and found out that they were

related to pigs kept by a local aristocrat and friend

of the royals. "

 

Game, set and match to the Mail. No wonder Lord

Hollick abandoned the Express soon after. The Tamworth

Two, who inspired three books and a styload of

merchandise, fared rather better, and now live happily

at the South of England Rare Breeds Centre near

Ashford in Kent.

 

Ten years earlier, an even more bitter battle had been

fought over a Spanish donkey called Blackie (real name

Nero), who became a cause célèbre in Britain when it

was reported that she was likely to be crushed to

death in a fiesta in the village of Villanueva de la

Vera, near Madrid. Enter animal rights campaigner

Vicki Moore, hotly pursued by reporters from the Sun

and Star. " The tabloids went to cover the fiesta

expecting trouble, " says a former reporter who was

once close to the (late) donkey. " They started writing

stories about its likely fate and were amazed at the

response back in Britain. Sun reporter Hugh Whittow

bought the donkey and put it in a local farmer's field

while he went to get something to eat. The Star's man,

Don Mackay, then came along, bought it off the farmer

and spirited it back to Dover. "

 

Such was the Starry-eyed view of the event. Matthew

Parris, who had visited the village, offered a more

cynical version later in the Times. " An unseemly

tussle ensued as tabloid journalists elbowed each

other to the negotiating table with various gnarled

Spanish peasants, all claiming to own Blackie. Large

sums of money changed hands and a donkey (which, I am

reliably informed, stood no more than a modest chance

of being the donkey in question) passed into the

possession of the Daily Star. "

 

Whittow, ironically now deputy editor of his former

bête noire, the Star, also brought back a donkey

purporting to be Blackie. At least one of these feted

animals became a symbol of the animal rights movement

and ended up at a sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon, where

it died of natural causes in 1993.

 

As the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food

(Maff) discovered earlier this year, our passion for

animals should never be under- estimated. With the

foot and mouth outbreak raging, Phoenix the calf was

found buried under a mound of carcasses in Devon,

having somehow survived an attempt to kill it by

lethal injection. A spokesman for Maff dismissed calls

for its life to be spared as " hideously sentimental " ,

and said of the slaughter policy: " It is imperative

that there are no exceptions. " The ministry was

immediately submerged under a wave of protest. Blair, who had narrowly survived the controversy over

the ousting of Humphrey the cat from number 10,

personally intervened to save Phoenix's life. The

ministry was killed off instead.

 

Phoenix's owner, Philip Board, turned down substantial

tabloid offers to buy her, and the fast-growing animal

is currently considering an invitation to star in Jack

and the Beanstalk at Wimbledon Theatre. She would

reportedly receive a payment far higher than the

Equity average, in part, of course, because she would

play both the front and back end of the cow. It could

be the start of a brilliant career. And who knows,

come next year, Marjan, lion of Kabul, might be

starring in The Wizard of Oz at the Bradford Alhambra.

But a word of advice to children in the front row:

don't tease him.

 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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