David Cameron's office isn't commenting on the claim he put a 'private part' in a dead pig

David Cameron
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

An unofficial biography of British Prime Minister David Cameron excerpted in the Daily Mail on Sunday made quite the claim — that as part of hazing for a diner's club initiation, the future leader once "inserted a private part of his anatomy" into a dead pig's mouth. The anecdote is attributed to an anonymous member of parliament who apparently went to school with Cameron.

"His spokesperson is not going to sit here and dignify a book by commenting on what is in there," Cameron's spokeswoman said Monday during what BuzzFeed News called an "unusually well-attended press briefing" in Westminster.

The spokeswoman also suggested Call Me Dave, by Lord Michael Ashcroft and former Sunday Times political editor Isabel Oakeshott, may have been written with the intent to undermine Cameron after he and Ashcroft had a falling out.

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Oakeshott is sticking by the story.

"The book was to be objective and anyone that reads it in full will agree that we have achieved that task," she reportedly told BBC's World at One. "Obviously this story has captured the public imagination — it's very funny, we used it because it's colorful and it made us laugh. But it's a few paragraphs in a very long book."

Black Mirror fans will note the allegations bear a striking similarity to a plot line in the show's first episode, but creator Charlie Brooker chalked it up to coincidence. Julie Kliegman

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Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.