I think it’s fair to say I’m not one of those people who go all Mike King on it when I see a piece of bacon. Yes, pigs can lead short and brutish lives, but if the end result is the taste-treat that is a crispy strip of bacon, then I can live with the guilt. Besides, lots of things live short and brutish lives and there’s only so much guilt I have to go around.

We had a guinea pig, once. Just for a few days. It lived a short and brutish life, even though everyone in our house loved it. (Except me, obviously, because I can see no evolutionary point in the guinea pig, so why waste time and emotion on one?) (And no, I had no hand in its untimely death, as you will see if you read on.)

Anyway, everyone loved our guinea pig; even though there was much dispute over the name. Van, as I recall, was hanging in there for Slayer; while Jethro was plumping for Snowball (so gay!), but it was Pascalle who won out (through her tactic of whining and crying) with Hairy McBear, even though guinea pigs have nothing to do with bears and they have fur, not hair. Mind you, they also don’t come from Guinea and they aren’t pigs, so who gives a fuck.

Hairy McBear lasted one day in our house – but not one night. Pascalle, who loved that pig to bits, took him out of his (or her, we never did really establish gender) cage after Mum and Dad had gone to bed and took him to bed with her. They snuggled in bed together, one imagines, until Pascalle fell asleep.

The next morning we were all awoken to Pascalle’s screams. It seems that at some stage in the night, Hairy McBear had taken to wandering round under the covers and had, eventually, found a nice warm spot in the close proximity to Pascalle’s butt-crack. At another, later, stage in the night she had rolled over onto her back and that was curtains for Hairy McBear. Whether he suffocated to death or was crushed, we never did find out before Dad buried him in the backyard.

See? Short and brutish. Even with all the love in the world, Hairy McBear died a horrible death. That is just the way of the world, as far as I can tell.

I write these words only to say one thing; that drug testing on humans is not a bad thing – especially if they’re barely human to start with.

The defence rests.