Peppa Pig meets Freddie FatCat in a story about crazy CEO bonuses

Peppa Pig has a new character to jump in muddy puddles with. He’s called Freddie FatCat!

Freddie FatCat is a corpulent moggie. Viewers may notice that his face bears a suspicious resemblance to Darren Throop, the chief executive of the franchise’s owner Entertainment One.

Instead of jumping in and out of muddy puddles, he likes nothing better to lap at a huge gem-encrusted bowl full of cream, while seven little mice surround him, all the while squeaking “you’re great, you deserve it”.

If you’re a parent, you’ll probably be aware that Peppa has been a stunning success with the world’s children, to the extent that she gambols around in golden boots. So do Mummy Pig, Daddy Pig and her brother George. Most of their anthropomorphic chums have them too.

They’re pre-school megastars. As well as the gazillion TV shows, that can be found on near permanent rotation on cable and satellite TV, there is a panoply of merchandise, and a theme park. Peppa’s even made it to the movies: Half-terms often see cinemas running extended episodes for the little darlings marketed as their “first cinematic experience”.

Nonetheless, I’d imagine that even taking all that into account, the porcine family would still find it a bit much for Freddie to be handed a no strings attached £7.6m for riding on their coat tails.

To be fair, there’s a fair bit more to the business than just Peppa.

But she and her family would hardly be alone in raising questions about the payment. The share-based award, due in a couple of years, is sufficiently crazy for voting advisors like Pirc and ISS to call for an investor rebellion.

Peppa is well known for expressing herself in a forthright manner, and you’d imagine that her writers would have her taking a dim view about Freddie’s antics were he to feature in an episode.

“Why do you need all that money Freddie? What do you have to do to earn it?”

And that’s just for starters.

Of course, the only answer she’ll get from the seven little mice on the Entertainment One board who approved the package, is: “Nothing! He’s great. He’s worth it.”

You can see how the episode would play out after that. Peppa and pals would teach Freddie FatCat and his little mice a lesson by jumping in the nearest muddy puddle and covering them in goo.

Unfortunately, in the real world it tends to be hard to find muddy puddles to jump in near AGM venues.

Institutional shareholders might think such behaviour on the part of the Entertainment One board is worthy of a mild rebuke, even a bit of a ticking off at today’s event, but I don’t imagine Mr Throop will have to worry overly about a dry cleaning bill.

Even if the story ends with a degree of sanity (don’t bank on it) and the company attaches a few conditions to the absurd award, Freddie will, one way or another, get his cream.

And he’ll keep getting it for as long as Peppa’s writers keep churning out the material that makes her a superstar.

It’s not just she and her family that have golden boots.