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Food critic AA Gill was today attacked by an animal welfare charity after he boasted about shooting a baboon on safari.
The writer told how he killed the ape while on a trip to Tanzania.
Gill described how he was driven by the urge to be a "recreational primate killer" during the culling of the inedible creature.
In his column in the Sunday Times yesterday, he wrote: "I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this. Baboon isn't good to eat, unless you are a leopard. The feeble argument for cull and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil of naughty fun."
His comments angered animal welfare charities which branded the act "utterly morally reprehensible".
Douglas Batchelor, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: "There is no excuse for taking potshots at such endangered species. The vast majority of people in this country find trophy-shootings of this kind absolutely despicable."
He added: "Baboons might not be in the same league as endangered elephants but that's not the point. Even if the world was overrun with such animals, it is not for a journalist to make the call of culling them."
Gill has often used hunting as the theme for his columns. In an article last year he described in detail the time he and chef Marco Pierre White killed a deer. Explaining why he shot the baboon, Gill said: "I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger. You see it in all those films: guns and bodies, barely a close-up of reflection or doubt.
"What does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone's close relative? But, as so often happens in life, when you stare into the magnifying glass at a profundity, it's the prosaic and pitiful that's reflected back. He looked much smaller dead."
Reader views (13)
Stupid, self-important little creep.Pathetic job as well. A food critic - hardly brain surgery is it? I'd like to see him served up as pig swill.
- Laura, Epsom
What's wrong with killing animals, somebody asks? Nothing in certain circumstances such as for food, population or pest control. This senseless killing however doesn't fit into any of these categories and cannot be justified as a result. It was killing for the sake of killing and that is wrong.
- Alan, Clevedon, UK
I too would like to see what it feels like to shoot a human.
I might go and find this A A Gill and shoot him in the armpit. But don't worry because he's a stranger and it's "a veil of naughty fun".
- Richard Spratley, Hertfordshire
"I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger.."
And he thinks that's a reasonable excuse? He sounds like he needs psychiatric evaluation.
- Sarah Bradshaw, Enfield, Middx
- Rogan, Irving
So - hunting is despicable? Thats what they do on safaris.
What in 1910!
- David, London
"...he sounds very dangerous". Have you heard Gill's high reedy weak voice? It always sounds ridiculous. I think I remember him having written in the past that this has kept him off radio and TV. A place and a position where the egocentric Gill would much love to have been. I've certainly always taken his urge to hunt writings as a pathetic attempt to be up with the successful alpha male TV personalities like White, Clarkson and the others. Hunting efforts never do disguise shortcomings and inadequacies.
- D. Howard, Henley
So - hunting is despicable? Thats what they do on safaris. I don't know the man or have any opinion on his character, but individuals selecting him out of all the hunters of the woirld to vilify seems just a little odd.
(And no, I'm not a hunter myself, even if I have no problems with these people).
- Rogan, Irving
What's wrong with killing animals? Seriously, it happens every day millions of times.
- Jon, london
I find it far easier to ignore everything this odious little troll says or writes. He'll soon disappear up his own backside.
- Anthony, Esher, Surrey
What a pathetic, cowardly apology for a man.
- Andrew, London
Baboons notwithstanding, AA Gill is an tedious little man with an incredibly over-inflated sense of self esteem.
- Bob, Cheam
Gosh, he sounds very dangerous. Strangely odd he killed a baboon, one of our nearest relatives, so he is guilty of a sort of hate crime and very cowardly. I wonder if he will come back as one in a later life. Only thing to say is that perhaps he killed cleanly, unlike many abbatoirs or animal experimenters who let their victims suffer a long time. Thought, if he wants 'recreational killing', why not let him shoot condemned human prisoners, he might enjoy living in China for instance.
- Helen, norwich
I think this man should get some help. He sounds seriously un-hinged.
- David, London
