A good cause can often be seen to be an even better one when it attracts the support of the stars of stage and screen, especially those for whom a day not spent publicising a campaign or signing a petition is a day squandered.
But the intervention by the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Joanna Lumley, Judi Dench, Pamela Anderson, and Ricky Gervais in an international argument about the fate of baby African elephants is to be welcomed.
They have spoken out in protest against the European Union’s decision to block a proposed United Nations ban on the export of these wild animals to zoos and circuses in other parts of the world, chiefly China.
The proposed ban is supported by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and, significantly, the governments of African elephant-range nations.
There is no shortage of evidence depicting the way in which calves are snatched from their habitats and their suffering when in captivity. Acting collectively as a bloc, however, the governments of EU states have concluded that this trade is acceptable. It is not; it is repellant.