Another cheerful celebration of the squirrel commando, Paul Parker, just in from the Daily Mail.

Paul Parker loves grey squirrels. Especially when they’ve been slow-cooked for eight hours with thyme, garlic and tomatoes.

Certainly my braised grey squirrel on a cherry tomato risotto – £12.95 at the Manor House Inn, 15 miles outside Newcastle, near Hadrian’s Wall – falls effortlessly off the bone and leaves a rich, gamey taste in the mouth, not unlike rabbit or pheasant…

‘I can’t sell them quick enough,’ says Paul. ‘I had 300 of them in the freezer. They’re all gone.’

The lean meat – there’s barely a trace of fat on these trim, athletic creatures – tastes particularly good after an energetic morning spent shooting squirrels and skinning them with Paul, up and down the Tyne valley, heading west from Newcastle towards the edge of the Pennines.

Paul, who is 45, runs a pest control company. Bees, wasps, bed bugs, squirrels, fleas, cockroaches, rodents and rabbits are all in his sights.

‘You hate them, we love them,’ is painted on the side of his van.