By Declan Taylor, courtesy of The Daily Star

BILLY JOE SAUNDERS says close pal Tyson Fury made him a very prickly offer.

But the WBO middleweight world champion had to turn it down - because he finds eating hedgehogs far too dry.

Heavyweight King Fury says he sometimes feasts on the spikey rodents in the build up to a big fight after marinating them in honey and baking them.

Fellow traveller Saunders says he speaks to Fury every day and has even been invited up north on a hedgehog hunting mission.

But he says he will not be adding them to his pre-fight diet as he prepares to face Max Bursak in the first defence of his world title at the Copper Box Arena on April 30.

Saunders said: “Hedgehog is very dry. I just tasted a bit my friend had cooked but maybe you could eat them raw.

“Tyson goes out catching hedgehogs all the time, he goes out and catches them every night.

“He wants me to go out and do it with him. You have to skin them before you eat them obviously.

“Tyson eats them all the time, we will try anything, us, we were brought up on nothing.

“Tyson runs them over in his car and then eats them I think.

“If I go to a restaurant I like eating crocodile and stuff like that, I like my food like that.

“But hedgehog is the maddest thing I’ve eaten. Tyson loves it - he lives off it.”

Saunders has also labelled Amir Khan’s fight against Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez for the WBC middleweight title ‘bulls***’.

The pair collide in Las Vegas on May 7 in a fight made five pounds BELOW the middleweight limit of 160lbs.

And Saunders rapped: “If you think you’re good enough to fight at 160 or good enough to be the middleweight champion of the world, don’t make it at 155lbs.

“I reckon the governing bodies shouldn’t let that happen - it’s a load of bulls***. I think you should fight at the weight that you’re champion at.”