It was perhaps the most surreal moment in recent British politics. In the middle of a speech to the CBIThe Confederation of British Industry is an organisation that lobbies on behalf of British companies. It claims to represent 190,000 businesses., the most important business organisation in the UK, prime minister Boris Johnson suddenly asked: "Hands up if you've been to Peppa Pig World!"

The delegates from Britain's most important industries were not impressed. Nor were many of Johnson's colleagues in government.

But it is easy to see why the prime minister might have been preoccupied with Peppa. There is much about her that does not make sense. Everyone in the Peppa Pig universe lives on an individual hill. Almost every job in her town (and, it is implied, in the entire country) is carried out by a single rabbit named Miss Rabbit. All the characters are anthropomorphicAnthropomorphism is when humans ascribe human-like traits, for instance personalities and emotions, to non-human things (including animals). animals, yet there are also ordinary animals, notably Tiddles the Tortoise, who is inexplicably obsessed with climbing trees.

Then there is the question of her height. Back in 2019, a Google search supposedly revealed that Peppa stands at an intimidating seven foot one inch tall. This makes her family roughly the same size as grizzly bearsA kind of large bear native to North America..

Peppa Pig's dizzying success might also seem difficult to understand. She started in 2004 as the brainchildAn original idea or invention. of a small animation firm. Now the franchise is worth more than £1bn a year. There are Peppa theme parks in the UK, China and the USA, with another planned for the Netherlands.

Peppa has worked with the UK Labour Party, and received endorsements from a former Australian prime minister and the Chinese army. She is so popular in the USA that some children have started using British expressions, like "petrol" instead of "gas" and "biscuit" instead of "cookie".

Critics of Peppa accuse her of heteronormativitySomething that reinforces the idea that heterosexuality is the normal or better sexual orientation.. There are no gay couples in Peppa's town: almost everyone belongs to a traditional nuclear familyA family group consisting of a married couple, typically assumed to be straight, and the children they share., with a working father and a stay-at-home mother.

Yet defenders of the programme argue that it is popular precisely because it shows children spending time with their families, something they see little of on TV.

And regardless of the family structures that the show portrays, some in the LGBTQ+ community have claimed Peppa as their own. This all goes back to a song Peppa released called Expert Daddy Pig, about her inept father. What her animators did not know is that in gay culture, "expert daddy pig" can refer to a male partner of a certain age and expertise.

Peppa also has a darker side. In 2017, a writer noticed that YouTube algorithms were responding to kids' Peppa addiction by producing floods of automatically-generated videos featuring their favourite pig. Some of these showed Peppa being tortured by the dentist, drinking bleach and eating her father.

So Peppa, some argue, provides a rare insight into the bizarre corners of 21st-Century culture. An unexpected capitalist success story, a socially traditional show with LGBTQ+ worshippers, a victim of Google's sinister algorithms: and now a favourite of the British prime minister.

Yes, say some. Peppa can tell us much about our times: about how the global economy will pick up popular franchises and wring all the profit out of them they can, how algorithms malfunction in their effort to get more views and how anything can be appropriated and reused on the internet.

No, say others. Children's TV shows rarely make sense to anyone other than children. Peppa has just hit on a winning formula. Her appropriation and subversion, and the various sticky ends she meets on YouTube, are simply because she is so widely recognisable: she does not have much meaning in herself.