To be fair, the denizens of these nearby worlds are likely to be fishy and should have more to fear from us than we do from them. But it’s the billions of other potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way that I’m concerned about. Worlds like current planet of the month Kepler-452b (AKA Earth 2.0) which has a 1.5 billion year head start on us. I mean, can you imagine what we could do in 1.5 billion years? We’d probably have an app that was like Uber for faster than light travel.

Anyway, this constant bombardment of alien life teasers means it’s hard to get the idea of a shimmering green alien stepping out of its spaceship to size me up (like a butcher might a cow) out of my head. And the natural corollary to this is: Christ, we treat farm animals badly. So perhaps when our galactic overlords rock up, they’ll look at the way we treat pigs and think, pfft, savages, before chucking us all in a slow oven to make a delicious dish of pulled person.

All of this has forced me to take a long hard look at my own meaty diet – and, slowly, I am coming round to the idea that the enormous piles of beautifully browned sausages, the perfectly grilled steaks, the crisp, delicious bacon and rest of the mixed grill that comprises at least 50 per cent of my diet, may be just be a little bit wrong. This has not been an easy journey for me to make. I am half German. I used to play rugby. I am 6’2”. I am designed to run on heavy fuel. And yet, I can’t shake this thought. It’s like I have a little winged pig on my shoulder whispering, “If you eat a variety of pulses, you need never turn another of my friends into a sausage.”