Daddy Pig is useless, but he isn't giving men a bad name

David Gandy claims Peppa Pig's father is a poor role model. But Charlotte Cripps says the supermodel is wrong about the children's TV character, who is emotionally present and kind

- Charlotte Cripps

David Gandy has called Peppa Pig’s dad a “useless fool” who promotes a bad “narrative” about men in the same way Andrew Tate does.

The supermodel, 45, who has two children, Matilda, seven, and Tabitha, four, with his barrister partner Stephanie Mendoros, was speaking on BBC’s Sunday withLaura Kuenssberg when he turned his attention to the caring, loving and fun Mr Pig.

“From a man’s point of view,” he said, “why are my children reading this book and the dad is a useless fool?”

Gandy, who is calling for better role models in popular culture where men are often portrayed as either wimpy or excessively masculine, also claims that Daddy Pig sets a bad example to children about gender roles.

Whether it’s Daddy Pig reading maps upside down or getting stuck in a soft play tunnel rescuing Mummy Pig, the basic complaint - according to Gandy - is that Mr Pig is so incompetent, he can’t share the parenting workload.

This isn’t even the first time that Gandy has criticised Daddy Pig. Last month, the model labelled him “a bungling fool who gets it wrong, while the mum gets everything right”, when he contributed to The Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) think tank’s Lost Boys study. Clearly, Daddy Pig has got under his skin.

Gandy is one of the UK’s highest-paid male models, best-known for wearing white briefs in Dolce and Gabbana’s 2007 Light Blue advert, and believes men of his generation are taking on a “different role”, which needs to be better represented in film and TV. “I do the washing, I do the cleaning, I do the school run,” he told the BBC. “Our roles have changed; we are the first generation my age where we’re seeing the dads who have to take on a different role.”

Gandy, along with the CSJ, is calling for a “masculinity reset” to address the unhealthy portrayal of men as either “frightening or pathetic”, saying: “There are not enough good examples out there of good, kind men and the things they do.”