Piggate

"Piggate" refers to a claim that, during his time at Oxford University, former British prime minister David Cameron inserted his penis and/or scrotum into a dead pig's mouth as part of an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston Society.

Downing Street sources responded by saying that Cameron, who was prime minister at the time, would not dignify the anecdote with a response, while friends reported him saying that it was "utter nonsense".

It was alleged in Call Me Dave – an unauthorised biography of the former British prime minister David Cameron by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott – that, as a student at Oxford University, former British prime minister David Cameron inserted "a private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig, as part of an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston Society.

[1][2] Ashcroft and Oakeshott recount that a Member of Parliament and contemporary of Cameron's at the University of Oxford told them the anecdote[3] at a business dinner in June 2014.

[citation needed] Ashcroft and Oakeshott failed to receive a response from the purported owner of a photograph of the alleged incident, and since the extract's publication no corroborating evidence has as yet been produced to support the anecdote.

[3][6] Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October 2015, Oakeshott said that the source of the allegation "could have been slightly deranged" and said that "there is no need for burden of proof on a colourful anecdote where we’re quite upfront about our own reservations about whether to take it seriously".

[citation needed] Other MPs would go on to deny being the source including Boris Johnson and Ed Vaizey as Downing Street announced the launch of an investigation into the identity of the MP in question.

"[22] In his 2019 autobiography, For the Record, Cameron wrote "The first I heard of putting private parts in pigs was when Craig told me about the allegation on the morning of 21 September 2015.

[26] After the anecdote appeared, social media users quickly made connections to "The National Anthem", the premiere episode of Black Mirror, wherein a fictional prime minister is forced to have sex with a pig.

Series creator Charlie Brooker, who wrote the episode, quickly denied any prior knowledge of the allegations, calling the situation "a complete coincidence, albeit a quite bizarre one.

"[27][28] Suzanne Moore in The Guardian compared the incident to the story related by Hunter S. Thompson on Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign tactics early in his political career.

The initial decision not to report on the anecdote by the BBC and some other broadcasters was criticised by the assistant editor of The Independent, Ian Burrell, who described its choice to "dodge" the story of the day as "unacceptable".

"[38] Then UKIP leader, Nigel Farage referred to the matter in the context of the build up to the referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European union in 2016.

[41][42] At one of the country's biggest Bonfire night celebrations in Lewes, a large effigy of Cameron with a pig's head was processed through the town and then burnt.