Pink Floyd — Pig UFO Alarm

About this episode

Pig UFO Alarm

Pink Floyd began photographing the inflatable pig above Battersea Power Station on 2 December 1976 for the Animals cover. A marksman was hired in case the moorings failed. The first day produced no usable combination of pig and sky, so the crew returned on 3 December—but the marksman was not rehired.

That afternoon the pig broke free, climbed into controlled airspace and passed through the Heathrow flight path. Police and aviation authorities tracked the unidentified object until it descended hours later and landed in a field in Kent, frightening cattle but injuring nobody.

The crew returned for a third day on 4 December. The final sleeve was assembled as a composite from the successful power-station photograph and a separate image of the pig—an orderly solution created only after the real prop had briefly become Britain’s most improbable aircraft.

It is one chapter in Absurd History of Celebrity Culture: true celebrity stories reconstructed as compact cinematic documentaries, where the historical detail is real and the presentation knows exactly how ridiculous reality can be.