“Why The Head, David?” Asks Hog’s Breath Owner

A lot can change in the space of a few weeks. Last time I talked with Pete he was gregarious, leaning back on his chair, with his foot resting on his knee and his arm draped over the chair next to him. He was excited about changes he was instigating at his chain of Hog’s Breath restaurants. He had just engaged a social media marketing company to help him reach a new demographic and had taken on a new chef who was developing dishes that would attract a younger, hip crowd. The restaurant was bustling, so much so that at times I struggled to hear even his booming voice over the background hum. He was on top of the world.

We’d arranged at our last meeting that I would return today to sample a new menu option. What I walk into feels like a different restaurant. Pete slumps alone at a table and there are no customers, and no hum. The air smells of incense, stale bacon grease and despair. On Tuesday the revelation that UK’s David Cameron pleasured himself in a pig’s mouth rocked the world and overnight Pete found himself presiding over the worst-named restaurant chain in the world.

“It’s been a shit of a fortnight,” he whispers, hunched over the table, both hands cradling a coffee mug that smells suspiciously of bourbon. He tells me about how the change in Australia’s Prime Minister started it. His social media agency advised he jump on the widely shared tweet that suggested people check their smoke alarm batteries as Australia had changed leader yet again. They said it would appeal to millennials’ sense of irony and disillusionment with politics. The idea was each of his eighty stores across Australia and New Zealand would post a photo of them checking the batteries and use hashtags. “It was a bit of a logistical nightmare really, there were ladders to find and health and safety rules. Lots of bloody red tape. Even the staff made it hard work. Some reckoned their contract didn’t cover using their image in promotions. We did it though in the end. Got a few favourites and a couple of retweets.” I ask him how this is related to his empty restaurant and pig-gate and he switches from maudlin to agitated. “It’s that bloody Cameron isn’t it! Why the head? Who does that? There’s teeth!” His finger is jabbing in the air driving his argument home and tearing holes in the haze of incense. He continues to explain about how a couple of tweets about hog’s breath reeking of semen made the rounds and it became a running joke. “We decided to burn incense in every restaurant so they smelled good you know, nothing like, well, you know.” He pauses and wearily rubs his temples. “The bloody smoke alarms were all working after the battery test thing. The incense smoke set each one off. Eighty bloody false call-outs. You have to pay for that you know. They send three engines to each call out. Three. I’m buggered. Had to lay most of the staff off, no customers anyway. Turned the bloody alarms off too.”

He’s drained his coffee cup and refilled it and after a few sips he’s talkative again. “I’ve always let anyone in here you know, thongs, shorts, gang patches, pajamas even. I always said Hog’s Breath was a place anyone could come and get a good feed. Well, maybe not Jews and Muslims.” He gestures through a fog of incense smoke to a couple of people handing out leaflets on the footpath. “Open door policy and all that. Something to be proud of you know. Well I’ve banned one group now — first bloody time ever. Those Piers Gaveston perverts. They’re not welcome. I don’t care how much money they have, those bastards are never setting foot in here,” he thumps his fist on the table, spilling his drink.

I use the break in conversation while he refills his mug to change the subject and ask him about the new menu item I was supposed to sample. In a clipped tone he retorts, “Pig’s tongue tacos with a creamy mayonnaise. Not bloody happening.”

I make my excuses and leave him there in a fugue of bourbon and incense smoke, muttering, “Why the head? Who does that?” On the way out I move a pile of paper napkins away from some precariously positioned sticks of burning incense. Outside a smiling woman with a headscarf hands me a leaflet. It has a picture of David Cameron holding a pig on it and tells me that eating halal is a good thing. A man with a skull cap thrusts another leaflet at me, same picture but this time the message is about eating kosher. They giggle at each other like flirting teenagers and I sense this is a rare moment in history, when Jews and Muslims unite because an Englishman shagged a pig’s head.

The above story is entirely fictional. I’m sure that the smoke alarms in all Hog’s Breath Cafes are fully bloody functional.