You’ve sung The Queen Is Dead at the top of your lungs, cried like a baby over Meat Is Murder and swooned over his pictures. Yes, this is Morrissey. And now two of you lucky people will be seeing the animal rights champion in concert soon – for free! You’ve no idea how jealous I am…A very generous PETA supporter has kindly donated a pair of concert tickets worth nearly £100 to Fish and Chimps. (Seriously, massive thanks - you know who you are!). The tickets are for the O2 Wireless Festival at Hyde Park, London on 4th July and other artists topping the list for the day include Beck and the Guillemots.So, you want to win? Fill in the form below by midnight Tuesday 1st July, hit send and wait for the results to come in… I’ll contact the winner and send out the tickets on Wednesday 2nd July.

Competition is now closed.

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What a legend. Our man Morrissey is unstoppable - he’s now taking on Edinburgh Zoo for their up-coming chimp enclosure, the Budongo Trail. He recommends instead that parents should take their children to the abattoir “for a lesson that no kid would ever forget”, stating in no uncertain terms, “If the Budongo Trail at Edinburgh Zoo is such a stimulating highlight, then why don’t the zoo staff live in it instead?” The full story is at The Times today, where you can read Morrissey’s damning view on keeping animals in captivity.

Image: TimeOut / CC

True to Morrissey style, he has given a bold statement against the Canadian seal slaughter. The statement appeared on a Morrissey Zine site True To You and reads:

“31 March 2008

Statement from Morrissey:

In late June the Montreal Symphony are hosting a TV Special to salute Buffy Sainte-Marie’s 50th year making music. I am honored to be asked to take part. I first bought a Buffy Sainte-Marie record when I was 12, and her music has always remained with me. In the 1960s, as a political activist, Buffy’s lyrics were fearless, and I’m very grateful for all the risks that she took.
I am also pleased to be asked to join the bill at the V Festival at the Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver, and also at Fort Calgary in Calgary.
However, as we all know, the psychologically and constitutionally sickening Canadian seal-kill has started and is once again in full-cry.
The horror of the Canadian seal-kill is untranslatable, and although I fully realize that highly concentrated evil exists in other countries - Japan’s dolphin slaughter, Iceland’s newly-revived whaling, the cat-skinning trade in Switzerland, and China with just about every injustice imaginable - there is something especially menacing about Canada’s seal-kill.
Loyola Sullivan (Canada’s Ambassador for Fisheries Conservation) is a man of glacial coldness who claims that the seal-kill is “humane” - a view he might alter if his own skull were cracked open with a spiked axe.
The fact that the seal-kill provides a livelihood for fishermen is an insultingly dim excuse for it to take place - after all, the German gas chambers of World War 2 also provided work for someone.
The seal-kill takes place to satisfy greed for fur-pelts, and this Canadian government is happy to drag the global image of its own country down, and make it a place that people such as I couldn’t bear to visit.

MORRISSEY, 29 March 2008.”

Don’tcha just love how ruthlessly honest he is? Keep it up Morrissey, stick up for the animals and don’t ever tame your words.

Image: Guardian Blog / Creative Commons

We all know that going veggie or vegan is the rock star thing to do and the past few days have seen an influx of articles on PETA celebrity legends and their compassionate diets. Morrissey reportedly pre-orders vegetarian meals for his roadies and will fire crew members if he catches them eating meat on tour, so says a former valet of his. Good for him, and I hope he never gives in to a single Big Mac wielding employee!

Bryan Adams has also been hitting the headlines with an insight into his oh-so-healthy vegan diet, which you can read in full here.

I love how simply he puts it: “I’m very slim due to my diet. When I see men and women my age with their guts hanging over their trousers I wish someone was able to explain the benefits of diet, and that they are likely to be toxic and blocked from the things they’ve eaten.” So true Bryan, so true.