# PigGate PigGate, also known as Hameron or The Bae of Pigs, is the September 2015 scandal that erupted when an unauthorized biography of British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed he had put his genitals in a dead pig's mouth during an Oxford society initiation[2]. Within a day the hashtag was tweeted more than 178,000 times, setting off a wave of pig puns, Peppa Pig jokes and Black Mirror comparisons that dominated UK Twitter that week[3]. ## Origin On September 20, 2015, The Daily Mail ran a serialized excerpt from Call Me Dave, an unauthorized biography of David Cameron by Conservative peer Lord Michael Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott[2]. An unnamed Oxford classmate told Ashcroft that Cameron had inserted "a private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig during an initiation for the Piers Gaveston Society, a secretive Oxford dining club known for heavy drug use and sexual parties[3]. The book acknowledged the story could not be fully verified but said the source had supplied corroborating detail, including the physical dimensions of a claimed photograph held by another classmate[3]. Cameron's staff declined to comment when asked about the allegation[3]. - **Platform:** The Daily Mail (news scoop) / Twitter (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2015 ## Overview The joke universe around PigGate / Hameron ran almost entirely on wordplay and old photo callbacks. British Twitter users pulled every pig idiom they could think of into service, from "pulled pork" and "pork barrel politics" to "telling porkies," the Cockney slang for lies[1]. Farm visit photos of Cameron cradling piglets or leaning close to sows got recirculated with fresh, knowing captions[1]. A parallel joke thread linked the story to Black Mirror's 2011 pilot "The National Anthem," in which a fictional British prime minister is coerced into performing a sex act with a pig on live television[2]. Show creator Charlie Brooker said publicly that he had no advance knowledge of the Ashcroft allegation and that the coincidence weirded him out[1]. Peppa Pig gags, Babe references and "David Hameron" puns filled out the rest of the pile-on[2]. ## How It Spread The hashtag actually predated the story. Twitter user gjb70 coined #Piggate ahead of the Mail's publication, working from advance rumors about what the excerpt contained[3]. Within 24 hours of the story going live, the tag had been tweeted more than 178,000 times, and a parody account called @CameronPig, written from the pig's perspective, picked up over 10,000 followers[3]. UK press coverage moved fast. The Guardian and The Independent both ran explainers, while the BBC's initial decision not to report the pig allegation drew criticism from viewers who read it as deference to Downing Street[3]. In the US, Gawker and BuzzFeed rounded up the best jokes, with BuzzFeed's Tom Phillips opening his roundup by warning readers, "You'll never look at the phrase 'pulled pork' the same way again"[1]. The Black Mirror callback did as much work as any single tweet. Charlie Brooker's four-year-old pilot about a PM and a pig went from cult sci-fi to lived reality overnight, and the shorthand "life imitating Black Mirror" attached itself to PigGate for years afterward[2]. ## How to Use PigGate posts typically pair a straight-faced photo of Cameron near a pig or piglet with a pun that treats the allegation as fact. Common conventions include swapping his surname for "Hameron," stacking pork idioms ("telling porkies," "pork barrel") into fake Question Time exchanges, and dropping a Black Mirror still under any Peppa Pig screenshot[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is PigGate? PigGate, also called Hameron or The Bae of Pigs, is the September 2015 scandal in which an unauthorized biography of David Cameron alleged that he had put his genitals in a dead pig's mouth during an Oxford society initiation[2]. ### Where did PigGate come from? It came from a September 20, 2015 Daily Mail excerpt of Call Me Dave, an unauthorized Cameron biography by Lord Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott, sourced to an unnamed Oxford classmate[2]. ### What does PigGate mean? The name stitches the -gate suffix used for political scandals onto the pig at the center of the allegation; alternate coinages Hameron and The Bae of Pigs turned it into a running pun[3]. ### How do you use PigGate? Posts typically pair old Cameron farm photos or Black Mirror stills with pork wordplay like "telling porkies" and "pulled pork," or with Peppa Pig and "David Hameron" jokes[1]. ### Is PigGate still popular? The hashtag peaked in September 2015 with 178,000+ tweets in a day and settled into a classic UK political reference point, especially whenever Black Mirror's "The National Anthem" is discussed[3]. ## References 1. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/what-if-black-mirror-but-too-much]() 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/piggate-hameron]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/piggate-hameron Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library