Donald Clarke: The words ‘gone viral’ don’t begin to cover Cameron’s #piggate

Why is this news? Anybody who has been near the comments trough on a newspaper website will have seen those words beating an angry tattoo beneath all sorts of articles that never claimed to be news.

Opinion columns attract more such rhetorical queries than anything else, but you'll also see the remark beneath fashion reports, arts coverage and celebrity interviews. (Oddly, you almost never find anybody asking this about commentary on filthy rugby.) Obviously, this isn't news. This is 800 words of vented spleen. Trust us. We don't confuse this stuff with the stock-market bulletin.

The bits of the paper that claim to report news must, however, take this question seriously. Sometimes the decisions made can be surprising. Over the past week there has been more idle chatter about a senior Tory politician than since John Profumo shared a swimming pool with Christine Keeler.

The story duly figured on the front of every tabloid. But it was reported only sketchily on Sky News and the BBC. There was some commentary in the Guardian, but not much in that paper's news reports.

This newspaper also had little to do with it. Nonetheless, there is little chance you don't know what I'm talking about. Last week, the Daily Mail, quoting a book by Lord Ashcroft, former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, claimed David Cameron misled the public about his knowledge of Ashcroft's tax status. This is a serious matter.

Yes, that was just another of my hilarious jokes. Lord Ashcroft did indeed level that accusation, but we are actually talking about the alleged allegation that, while at Oxford, Mr Cameron allegedly poked his youthful manliness into an alleged pig’s mouth. The event is said to have happened during an initiation ritual of an organisation named for Piers Gaveston, the presumed lover of Edward II. But you probably guessed that.

National tragedies

Every now and then an event occurs that, in an instant, turns the world into a different planet. The sky seems a new, more alien colour. The air tastes of unfamiliar elements. Thinking back 30 minutes to a time before the convulsion, one feels oneself pondering prehistoric aeons. Sadly, these events are usually national tragedies, but occasionally they are joyous occasions, such as somebody saying he knows someone who once saw Cameron poking Percy into a porker.

The event we must now call #Piggate hit Twitter late on Sunday night. Within five minutes the medium had become hopelessly infested with charcuterie puns, pictures of Miss Piggy, quotes from the last paragraph of Animal Farm and reimaginings of the rape sequence in Deliverance.

The words “gone viral” don’t cover it. We would all remember where we were when this terrible image was first placed in our minds.

The mirth was driven mostly by Schadenfreude. But there were some eerie subtexts to the story. Many thought of the first episode in Charlie Brooker's satirical series Black Mirror, which saw a prime minister forced to have sex with a pig on national television.

To add to the creepy synchronicity, that episode was entitled The National Anthem: a reminder of the recent, less lurid scandal concerning Jeremy Corbyn.

Then there is that famous exchange in Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. The bandit journalist describes an incident in one of Lyndon Johnson's early campaigns: "He told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent's lifelong habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows."

The aide complained that nobody would believe such a thing. “I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Blanket ridicule

Of course, neither Cameron nor his cronies offered any specific denials of the #Piggate allegations. They merely delivered blanket ridicule of Lord Ashcroft’s book. Nor did the grown-up political correspondents spend much time discussing the porcine induction rituals.

Painful though it is to acknowledge, we must grudgingly conclude that dubious third-hand reports of youthful debauchery probably don’t constitute serious news.

Even if the story were true, no laws would have been broken. The pig is said to have been long dead (its head, indeed, separated from its body). For all that, this story will follow Cameron for the rest of his career. It is believed that, overlooked after the 2010 election, Lord Ashcroft was seeking revenge. By golly, he’s got it.

Now go and read some real news.