Hugo Rifkind

You will have smirked. Shame on you, but you will. Yet reluctantly, and out of respect for the recently deceased, I intend to tread lightly over the story of the Australian pet collector killed earlier this week by her own overamorous camel. I shall note, with a restrained interest, the use of the word ‘humped’ in several tabloid headlines. I may, coyly, draw your attention to the victim’s reported ‘love of exotic animals’. There, however, I shall rest. I am no ghoul. Instead, I am going to talk about a different sort of camel. G. camelopardis, to be precise, the South African giraffe. To be even more precise, I am going to talk about a particular South African giraffe.

There was a photograph in one of the Sunday papers, and it caught my eye. It showed a cheery bald man in some drowned Gloucestershire village traversing the floodwater on a penny-farthing. Hmm, I thought to myself, almost immediately, I bet that’s faked.I should be careful here. The kind of man who would ride baldly and cheerily through floodwater on a penny-farthing is the kind of man, I suspect, who would fire off a wronged and angry letter to a newspaper at the merest drop of a (doubtless jaunty, perhaps themed) hat. So, to be clear, I am suggesting no impropriety. I am merely suggesting that, perhaps, the situation was not quite what this photograph suggested. Perhaps there was some collaboration at work here.