Pigs trot to fame in BBC film on the great escape

Only the British would make national heroes out of the two pigs who escaped from a slaughterhouse and made a dash for freedom. Britons are o...

Only the British would make national heroes out of the two pigs who escaped from a slaughterhouse and made a dash for freedom. Britons are often mocked for treating their pets better than their children.

So the BBC clearly felt it was onto a winner immortalising the exploits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance pigs. They were two Tamworth ginger-haired pigs who sparked an international media frenzy in 1998. Even Japanese and American networks flew in to cover the chase. The Legend of the Tamworth Two, being screened by BBC Television on Monday, relives the frenetic week when the porcine pair were billed the world’s most famous fugitives. The plucky porkers escaped the abattoir knife in the western English town of Malmesbury by burrowing under a fence and swimming across an icy river to freedom.

Tabloid newspapers offered huge rewards for the fleeing pigs. TV helicopters hovered over the sleepy rural backwater. The Vegetarian Society begged Britons to save their bacon. The mission to save Butch and Sundance became a public obsession in animal-worshipping Britain where the film Babe — about a talking piglet — was a smash hit.

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Journalist Wendy Best, who broke the tale in her local newspaper, said: ‘‘I knew it was a good story. It was January, the weather was foul, it was after Christmas and people needed cheering up.’’

The original Tamworth Two were finally recaptured and boughtby the Daily Mail newspaper before becoming a tourist attraction at an animal sanctuary. The eight pigs used in the BBC film will not be ending up as another great British tradition — roast pork for Sunday lunch. They have been retired to a farm park. —Reuters

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