If I hear one more thing about swine flu I might lob a packet of bacon at the wall.

This week, I’d like to use this precious three hundred word slot to have a right, royal Charlie Brooker-style rant about this intolerable ‘pandemic’ and apart from anything else, what it is doing to the world’s pig industry.

If it’s not MPs and their soft furnishing slash porn film allowances, it’s column inches wasted on killer pigs.

Come on, let’s tone it down. Call it Mexican flu at least. After all, they started it.

It only results in people giving pork a wide berth. There’s bound to be a whole host of idiot shoppers thinking if they bite into a sausage they’ll immediately start sneezing. No farmer, already brow-beaten by Brussels’ red tape, needs this.

The British egg industry almost collapsed when junior health minister Edwina Currie opened her mouth warning people about salmonella, and about a decade later, beef consumption fell by a third when it was first announced you might go mad if you ate it.

Worryingly, Egypt is already in the midst of its mass slaughter of pigs as ‘a precaution.’ I’m a bit unnerved by the media in this country too, who seem to be willing this flu virus to wipe out giant swathes of the British public because it will make a good headline.

The first two people to get it became mini celebrities with the public desperate to know what it was like to teeter on the edge of death with just a cold.

The news coverage seems to suggest we’re all pretty much doomed. Chortle about growing a snout and trotters you may, but what happens? People start panic buying Dettol and the authorities churning out leaflets on hand-washing.

Thank god it seems to be on the slow-down. I can get back to my pork chops and newspapers can get back to whinging about the recession.