But then they produce Squid Game instead).Īll in all, rejoiced the PM, it reflects “the power of UK creativity. And not just in Britain but around the world, where people polled in country after country put family at the very top of the list of things that give their lives meaning (with the exception of South Korea, where “material well-being” comes top. But it’s a secret to no-one that the whole thing is a cosy nostalgia feast of nuclear-family stereotypes, where everyone knows their place and is mildly sent up for liking it there.Ībove all it’s a family show. Naturally, the PM, who favours a pair of beaten up old black trainers, had a bit to say about the show being “stereotypical about Daddy pig” – noted for being unshaven, over-optimistic and generally inept. Who needs a campaign maestro like Isaac Levido, or Machiavellis like Dominic Cummings? It’s like all the promises of a Conservative manifesto in delightful primary-coloured five-minute episodes. What’s there for a Tory PM not to like? You can even get straight through to Doctor Brown Bear – on the second ring! – and once he has sympathetically listened to his patient’s woes, he’ll come out and do a home visit. Like Fatima of last year’s fatuous Government ads, Mrs Rabbit has a new job every episode.
But the very idea is meat and drink to the party base. There is, salivated BJ, “discipline in schools”, though I’m not quite sure Madame Gazelle, Peppa’s form teacher, is Ann Widdecombe’s idea of a hang ‘em and flog ‘em type. The whole place has a reassuring whiff of bobbies on the beat. Priti Patel and Cressida Dick watch out! This is a world in which, when Peppa’s younger brother George loses his toy dinosaur, the police actually care – and even try to locate it – rather than sighing, giving him a crime number and telling him to call his insurance company. He praised the show’s “very safe streets”. For a Conservative leader buffeted by mishap and slipping poll ratings, the cartoon’s spin-off theme park in the New Forest, which Boris visited with his youngest son last weekend, must indeed look glorious.įirst up, noted our law and order PM, it is a back-to-basics place. “Peppa Pig World,” noted the PM, “is very much my kind of place.” No wonder. Now we know that part of its charm is political, too. Sending up the self-regarding idiocies of middle-class life, it is a show, like pantomime, which charms on many levels.
Not only that but, in the 17 years since she first appeared on our screens, watching Peppa and her animated band has been just about bearable for parents too. How the tiny tots love the snorts and oinks and gentle larks of the anthropomorphic piglet. In other words, Boris has been parenting the entire span of the cartoon pig’s existence.Īnd as any parent knows, Peppa goes down a storm with the nippers. But here is a man whose eldest child, Lara, was conceived almost 30 years ago and whose youngest, Wilfred, turns two next year. Yes, the “vroom vroom” noises may have raised some eyebrows, the shuffling of papers caused consternation and the muttered apologies lent him the air of a vicar lurching into wedding vows at a funeral. In my book the most surprising part of Boris Johnson’s, shall we say, ‘off-piste’ ruminations to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) was that he was “a bit hazy” about the charms of Peppa Pig.