James Moore: Peppa Pig on the big screen? Time to take cover

Outlook Yesterday’s column featured a little piece of good news. Barbie, the bane of progressive parents everywhere, is in decline. Now here’s the bad, at least if you share your home with toddlers and pre-schoolers: Peppa Pig keeps growing and growing. At this rate Entertainment One, the property’s owner, will have to produce a muddy lake rather than muddy puddles to keep all the pestilential porker’s little fans happy.

But hang on, there might be hope. E1’s film division hasn’t brought home the bacon in quite the same way as its TV business, at least during the first nine months of the year. It could have been worse were it not for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, a property which the little darlings might graduate to once they’re a little older.

There’s still another film to go before the franchise is wrapped up. Could its feisty heroine Katniss Everdeen do us all a favour by firing off one or two of her trademark arrows in Peppa’s direction?

But that would be mean. The worst of it is, with a 15-minute episode set to make its debut in movie theatres, you can see what’s on the horizon: Peppa the Movie might be the ideal way to revitalise E1’s film division. Katniss, help!