Pigs can't fly

But they do help Brit kids behave.

An accidental tourist, were he to find himself in London or, indeed, any other major British city, on a Saturday night, somewhere in the vicinity of a nightclub, would probably think a riot was imminent.

And that perception would chiefly be brought home by the sight of youngsters, boys and girls alike, going rather mental after a bout of binge drinking.

Tales abound of teenagers, and sometimes even pre-teens, running riot in the street, smashing things up, even assaulting people and each other.

But beyond rather bad behaviour after getting gobsmackingly drunk, there have been enough reports about the problem of teenagers in the UK, well, behaving badly even without the aid of spirits.

Things got so bad that the authorities even had to bring in a special law, the Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, or ASBOS, to try and deal with the situation.

But that's containment, really, not quite the holistic remedy.

But if a school in the Greater Manchester were to set the example, the Brits might just have found a way to deal with the issue, at an early stage that is.

If anti-social tendencies set in at a young age, the school seems to have found a remedy by letting a couple of pigs mingle with four-year old pupils in the school, even inside the classrooms.

The pigs, named Charlie and Lola, have apparently had an effect, and the students now are better behaved.

The pleased head-teacher avers the children are now 'calmer, quieter and generally nicer towards each other'.

It's a moot point whether the experiment will catch on, and if it will lead to a better-behaved set of British youngsters.

But there will be some psychological explanation for why little piglets are helping cut down kids being noisy and nasty to each other.

But then the school also happens to have pygmy goats, hens, cockerels, rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas.

So, maybe it's not the pigs. It's quite a menagerie, though.

And perhaps one of those odd British eccentricities one hears about.