Aardman’s tale of a group of plucky hens standing up to their pie-making masters was a favourite in our house, and – I realised – incompatible with my taste for burgers
B
y the age of 15, I was already torn between my love of animals and the deliciousness of a 99p McDonald’s Mayo Chicken. As a child I was a fussy eater, with meat and carbs being the mainstays, but as I got older I found it harder to justify eating meat. A lifelong animal lover and one of those annoying people who jokes about their “connection to animals”, I never missed an opportunity to pet a neighbourhood dog or say hello to a group of cows in a field.
So, going into my teenage years, I knew that eating meat was not really compatible with my way of thinking. But like most I found it easy enough to put those concerns to one side when I was scoffing a Greggs steak bake. Until at 15 I got the nudge I needed to take the leap into vegetarianism.
It came in the unlikely form of an animated film aimed at five- to 10-year-olds: Chicken Run. I have always had a special attachment to the Aardman animation, centred on a group of chickens’ desperate attempt to escape the farm where the evil owner Mrs Tweedy is planning to turn them all into pies. The film was released the year I was born and is regularly quoted in my family home thanks to its wholesome humour and charming characters: Ginger, the savvy political strategist; Bunty, the strong-willed mother hen; and my personal favourite, Babs, the salt-of-the-earth hen who is always knitting. “I don’t want to be a pie,” she cries at one point, “I don’t even like gravy.”
