Anders Lustgarten

Last Thursday I took refuge in Radio 4's Afternoon Theatre, The Hamster, by Anders Lustgarten, a comic fable, about a man who buys his wife a special hamster. They have chosen to have no children and live in an upmarket gated development where the rules forbid all pets. This one grows bigger than a very large dog and becomes an object of veneration to world wide hamster fans who flock to visit it, photograph it, pay good money for half an hour alone with it. Busy as I was making a Dundee cake according to the free Daily Telegraph book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (excellent recipe, but allow rather more baking time than he does) I grew uneasily suspicious that this hamster thing was some kind of peculiar kinky metaphor. As I didn't like the characters, the squeaky hamster or the many mentions of its giant droppings, I switched off.