The (recently deceased) French New Wave director Claude Chabrol looked a little like Barry Humphries. Here he is in a brilliant cameo as a zoophile in the absurdist black comedy Avida by the notorious writer-directors Gustave de Kervern and Benoit Delepine.

While expressing his ‘love’ for animals (subtitles not required) Chabrol looks like  Sandy Stone and  Les Patterson.

I rescue Daddy Long Legs who are in danger of being washed down the drain, and I feel guilty using Ant Rid.

So when I read on a box of Country Life soap:-

“This product contains NO PALM OIL.  Together Country Life and the Melbourne Zoo are committed to wildlife conservation and the use of environmentally sustainable raw materials.”,

I bought it, happy in the knowledge I was helping the orangutans.  But while soaping up I began to wonder what the soap did contain: peanut oil… linseed oil… Valvoline? No, apparently it’s  sodium tallowate made from, among other things,  cattle fat.

So “environmentally sustainable raw materials” are cows.

The scenes of the refugee boat striking rocks on the shore of Christmas Island illustrated the awful power of the ocean. The initial footage seemed rather innocuous with the boat slowly encroaching on the swell. But suddenly the sea, which had been the refugees’ ally, turned on them. In a terrible irony the sea used the land they had long sought, to ruin them – smashing the fragile vessel against the rocks and then pulling it apart as the swell receded.