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How ‘Algie’ the pig from Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover floated 60 miles from Battersea Power Station into Kent

It is, perhaps, one of the most iconic album covers of all time - an inflatable pig floating above the then very industrial site of Battersea Power Station.

Pink Floyd’s classic Animals album is considered among their best works - released in 1977 it followed in the footsteps of seminal works The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.

The iconic album cover with 'Algie' between the towers of Battersea Power Station. Picture: Harvest/Hipgnosis
The iconic album cover with 'Algie' between the towers of Battersea Power Station. Picture: Harvest/Hipgnosis

But that pig would end up going on a remarkable journey - breaking free from its moorings and floating across much of Kent before returning to earth in a farmer’s field in the county some 60 miles away.

So how did that famous animal manage to make such an unexpected flight?

The idea to shoot the pictures at the semi-closed power station was the group’s co-founder and then-leader, Roger Waters.

He’d rejected a host of ideas from the band’s go-to art designers, Hipgnosis - a legendary design department who’d come up with the cover concepts for Floyd and the likes of Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Wings.

“I don’t think the boys thought the ideas were that brilliant,” he explained in Mark Blake’s book Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd.

Roger Waters and David Gilmour watch as the pig is lifted into place. Picture: YouTube
Roger Waters and David Gilmour watch as the pig is lifted into place. Picture: YouTube

“So there was this feeling of ‘well, if you don’t like it, do something better’. So I said ‘OK, I will’ and I pedalled around South London on my bicycle and took some photos of Battersea Power Station.”

Drawn to what he described as the “doomy, inhuman” image of the imposing building, it was he who came up with the idea of floating a pig between the towers. It would, after all, tally well with the album’s recurring track - Pigs on the Wing.

So work began on getting a giant 30ft inflatable pig, with Hipgnosis agreeing to stage the photo shoot.

By early December, 1976, three days were put aside to inflate and hoist the pig - which the band had nicknamed ‘Algie’ - high into the London sky and suspend it between the power station’s imposing towers. Giving plenty of time for the right image to be caught. Or so they thought.

As the band attended to watch Algie’s rise from the ground, a marksman was employed to take down the helium-filled inflatable if, somehow, it managed to break free.

Algie is hoisted from the ground heading for the sky above the power station. Picture: YouTube
Algie is hoisted from the ground heading for the sky above the power station. Picture: YouTube

Technical difficulties on day one meant the pig hadn’t inflated property, but in their eagerness on day two, Algie was hiked high early…and then, after a gust of wind, his moorings snapped. The marksman had yet to arrive.

Which meant the pig started rising above the power station and at pace.

“I remember being there and seeing this thing disappearing over the horizon,” said the band’s now-frontman David Gilmour.

Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell was the co-founder of Hipgnosis. He explained: “Algie the pig flew away right into the path of planes coming into Heathrow Airport.

“All hell broke loose. The RAF and air traffic control at Heathrow all started reporting this flying pig. We even had a mention on the evening news.”

'Algie' the enormous inflatable pig is inflated with helium. Picture: YouTube
'Algie' the enormous inflatable pig is inflated with helium. Picture: YouTube

“Everyone was partly amused by it,” added Nick Mason, the band’s drummer as he watched the pig take flight, “but also partly thinking we might be caught up in one of the worst aviation disasters in history.

“The pilot of the police helicopter couldn’t climb as fast as the pig could - it was climbing 2,000ft a minute.”

“We couldn’t wait to get the thing up in the air,” added Gilmour, “and of course the marksman, who was employed for just such an eventuality, hadn’t turned up yet.”

By the afternoon, carried on the wind, it was, remarkably, spotted flying at 18,000ft above Chatham - that’s almost three-and-a-half miles up. It was later spotted floating up above Maidstone.

“By 9pm, I received a call from a farmer in Kent.” adds Powell, “he said ‘are you looking for a pink pig? Well, it’s in my field, frightening my cows’. He was furious.”

East Stour Farm today - where the pig finally landed. Picture: Google Earth
East Stour Farm today - where the pig finally landed. Picture: Google Earth

The pig had flown as far as a field between Chilham and Godmersham, just outside Canterbury, before coming down from a height which would have troubled pilots and in amongst the cows.

It finally settled on James Stewart’s East Stour Farm.

“I didn’t see it come down,” the farmer said at the time, “but my men watched it. I didn’t believe them at first so I went to see.

“We caught it, tied it up to the barn and called the police. We were all surprised to see it.”

A team from Pink Floyd’s road crew were despatched that evening to go and retrieve the giant pig.

Battersea Power Station today is now home to shops, restaurants and high-end apartments
Battersea Power Station today is now home to shops, restaurants and high-end apartments

Returned to Battersea the following day - apparently unharmed after its unexpected excursion - it was reinflated and took to the air again. This time carefully tied and with not one but two marksmen present to shoot it down if it broke free again.

All went well, however, and the photographs the band - and the design studio wanted - were taken.

However, no one shot captured the iconic scene.

As Powell explained: “When we got the photographs back, the shots from the third day looked rather dull. Whereas the pictures from the first day had this fantastic doomy sky and these wonderful cloud formations.

“So we used the sky from the first day and dropped in the picture of the pig from the third day. If we’d done that at the beginning, we could have saved thousands of pounds.”

But then we’d have never known that pigs could fly.

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