This BBC documentary is entitled The Man Who Eats Badgers and Other Strange Tales from Bodmin Moor about Arthur Boyt, a retired civil servant, who collects and eats roadkill. Mr Boyt’s freezer is brimming with badgers, barn owls, dogs, cats, otters and foxes. But this is much more than a tale about strange eating habits. It is a portrayal of a small, isolated community on a bleak Cornish moor told through superbly shot filming and an intelligent script full of pathos.
The documentary begins with Boyt receiving an abusive call from a disgruntled local…
This video is a 5 minute preview. Watch the complete video here (free, of course).
“Wonderland: The Man Who Eats Badgers and Other Strange Tales from Bodmin Moor (BBC2) showed, rather to my surprise, the civilising effect of women. Bodmin Moor is a desolate stretch of Cornwall populated sparsely and almost entirely by men. There are heaps of rock, balanced precariously, as if some enormous child had grown bored with his play, and valleys flattened as though something immense had lain there in the night. No women.” The Guardian.
This article on Mr Boyt tells us that his favourite meal is a badger sandwhich. Celeb cook Gordon Ramsey is interested in him. He also gives a recipe for roadkill hedgehog.
For most, a squashed hedgehog or flattened badger lying on the side of the road is a tragic sight – for Arthur Boyt it is an opportunity for a free, tasty and nutritious meal. Mr Boyt has spent the last 50 years scraping carcasses from the side of the road and chucking them, together with a few herbs and spices, into his cooking pot.
The retired civil servant has sampled the delights of weasel, rat and cat. His most unusual meal was a greater horseshoe bat, which he reckons is not dissimilar in taste to grey squirrel, if the comparison helps. Fox tends to repeat on him. He has tucked into labrador, nibbled at otter and could not resist trying porcupine when he came across a spiky corpse while on holiday in Canada. The Guardian