Britain Needs a New Alpha Predator

From giant cats in the countryside to swaggering urban foxes pumped on chemical smog and KFC debris, it feels like other species are about to get their act together and start killing us.

From giant cats in the countryside to swaggering urban foxes pumped on chemical smog and KFC debris, it feels like other species are about to get their act together and start killing us.

And not before time. The threat of agonising death in the maw of some shadow-dweller could restore some much-needed humility to this country.

Although I've never known any cavemen personally, I imagine they were pleasant. Clustered around a fire, in a cave (one assumes), staring sagely into the flames. Basically self-effacing, they said little apart from the odd kindly-pass-the-bone grunt.

They were too humble to bray about 'exciting creative projects', their sex lives or how great their latest stone axe is - fear of predation kept them aware of their own mortality, and by extension their own insignificance.

Consider the benefits of re-introducing wolves to the UK. Not the standard human-shy wolves - they would only attack sheep, injured heifers and Liam Neeson - but some vast slavering bred-for-purpose lupine monstrosities with shaggy white pelts and gloopy, shimmering eyes like opalescent pools of hate.

The impact on our collective psyche would be immediate and positive.

On a shoot for The Only Way Is Essex, the cast would arrive one morning to find Joey Essex missing. I'm sorry, a stony-face producer would announce, Joey's gone. They found his arm this morning, in a bush. His foot was in a hedge.

Don't go out at night alone, the producer would add, not even to the Sugar Hut.

The Essex survivors would regard each other with quiet solemnity, all thoughts of champagne, VIP rooms and vaginal adornment abandoned.

We are nothing, they would think. Just walking meat. Nothing at all. Let us forget all this and go home to our families. We are nothing.

And somewhere in the wilds of Brentwood, a wolf would howl.

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