Ricky Gervais appeared on the BBC radio show broadcast from Aintree, the location of the big horse racing event known as the Grand National this weekend.

When asked about things that offend him, the comedian told the show's host: "Well, you are at Aintree. I don't think that people should make horses jump over things being whipped, and when they injure themselves, they are put down because they are not worth having around because of economic reasons."

Added Gervais: "Basically a beautiful majestic beast that took 2 billion years to evolve has just been slaughtered for fun..."

That's a pretty disingenuous argument. It's perfectly possible to live a healthy life on a vegetarian or vegan diet. Those of us who eat meat do it because we enjoy it and we think it's fine to kill an animal on that basis, not because we need to.

As has been pointed out, you could quite easily be a vegitarian/vegan and still get full nourishment. Selective principles once more.

By the way, just for record, I eat meat and I like horse racing, so I'm not going at the 'pious' angle on this one. Just the 'you're a bit of a hypocrite' one.

Not at all I'm against making an animal compete in an event that potentially kill it.

A human is predesposed to eat meat, I try my best to buy meat that is ethically produced so don't class myself as a Nazi about this I just think that for the sake of a sport a horse dieing is pretty sad, people would be up in arms if there was a call to permit dog fighting or bear baiting and I see the lack of similarity on the barbarity stakes but the fact that animals stand to be injured is the same end result.

A professional footballer has just, tragically, died. Is football barbaric and cruel?

Obviously not as participating was his choice, the same cant be said for the two horses that died at the weekend.