Gervais tackles Brown on bearskins

As Gordon Brown gets on with "saving the world", the comedian Ricky Gervais appears far more concerned about the Prime Minister dithering over another matter – namely, putting an end to the 200-year-old tradition of Guards' regiments wearing bearskin hats.

He wrote to the PM in August asking that the bearskins be replaced with a synthetic alternative. And now, frustrated by the lack of progress at the Ministry of Defence, he has fired off a stiff follow-up to Brown.

"Your MoD advisers claim that this [replacing the use of real bear skins] can only happen when a 'suitable synthetic alternative' can be found. Please know that the MoD have sung this song for years. If killing bears for ceremonial caps is cruel, how can we justify allowing it to continue? As long as bears are shot for the caps, the MoD must surely be compelled to establish a timeline of some urgency within which they will phase [them] out. Would your office be so good as to prod them with a stick?"

Gervais is not alone in finding the use of real bearskins repugnant. Both Stella McCartney and Dame Vivienne Westwood have offered their help to animal campaigners in the search for a replacement, but this has yet to be taken up. The MoD says "a suitable alternative continues to prove elusive". ·