Ovicide At Beckingham Palace

Cuter than most pictures posted here.

The grimmest of news from the Beckhams' Hertfordshire estate, as it emerges that a fate worse than death - specifically, dismemberment followed by death - has befallen one of the lambs Victoria's staff were babysitting for Gordon Ramsay.

Named Charlotte and Gavin after the Church-Hensons, the two woolly charges are some kind of tedious plot device on the chef's F-Word show, and it was whilst gambolling freely on Victoria's land that Charlotte met her untimely end, apparently at the claws of "a big cat".

"The lamb's carcass was sent to Scotland," a source informed the Mail on Sunday, "to be analysed by an autopsy expert."

Of course it was. You have to love us as a culture, don't you? We'll get around to solving the whole headless-child-torso-in-the-Thames case REAL SOON.

But what of the confused livestock left behind?

"Victoria was especially concerned as her children have a Shetland pony which was given to them as a present by Elton John," this source continued. "She made sure the pony as well as Gavin were kept in an outhouse at night after Charlotte was killed."

Talk about shutting the stable door after Charlotte Church has been torn limb from limb. This clearly isn't enough.

Surely the serially concerned Elton should be sufficiently struck by the peril of these celebrity beasts to stage one of his trademark interventions, the usual exercise in monumental self-regard in which he will explain to the miniature pony and its ovine enabler that to continue to live in this crazy spiral is not to choose life. It is to choose fear and death.

In fact, which of us would be surprised if "big cat savaging" was not simply the barnyard euphemism of choice for a young quadruped that has too much, too young, and expires after ingesting one potent grass-and-dandelion speedball too many?

For Charlotte, no such choices remain. She simply burned too brightly, and Lost in Showbiz will be wearing a black armband until some other dumb animal is added to the Beckham menagerie, and the novelty makes us forget all about her.