LAST year everyone was talking about Tiger King, the Netflix show about big cat collector Joe Exotic and his nemesis, animal conservationist Carole Baskin. I gave it a miss, it all looked too weird.

Now Louis Theroux has revisited convicted felon Joe Exotic in a BBC documentary, while Ross Kemp fronted an ITV two-parter about ‘Britain’s tiger kings’. Investigating why people keep animals such as tigers, bears and crocodiles, Kemp visits a man who has two lions in his back garden. How is this even legal? It’s cruelty, and it’s time to stop making cult heroes of these people. When Kemp asked if they’d consider sending their big cats to a sanctuary with a more natural habitat “the answer was often no”. That tells you all you need to know about private owners of wild animals.