Cinders, the six-week-old Saddleback from Thirsk, wasn't keen on getting her trotters dirty and mucking in with her mates in the mud.
That was until the owner's 12-year-old daughter fitted her with a pair of wellington boots.

Pigs are very intelligent animals and Cinders obviously didn't agree with the phrase "happy as a pig in muck". Being a lady pig it probably should have been "happy as a pig with a new pair of shoes".

It got me thinking of unusual phobias and how they can control someone's life. A colleague has an irrational dislike of buttons describing them as "an unnecessary fuss".

Two of the men at work have a crippling fear of spiders while quite a few are deeply suspicious of clowns, which apparently is known as coulrophobia.

I can definitely agree with that one, there is something quite menacing and not quite right about a so-called entertainer with a painted-on smile. Even as a child I never found them funny. Their bright red wigs, flapping big shoes and tendency to fall over just never did it for me.

It always amazes me just what some people are scared of – caligynephobia is the fear of beautiful women, while nephophobia is the fear of clouds.

Can you believe some people are scared of chins? Yes, they suffer from geniophobia, and not jimmyhillphobia, although there's quite a few people have that too.

Apparently, Margaret Thatcher was scared of men with beards to the extent all her Cabinet were clean-shaven.

Joking aside, some phobias really do ruin people's lives. They can stop people leaving the house and quitting their job because of it.
Sufferers sometimes resort to hypnotherapy to cure them or, in the most extreme cases, the controversial aversion therapy which involves simultaneous pain and stimulus.

Others prefer to just confront their fears head on, like doing a parachute jump when scared of heights or being covered in insects. I wonder how people with the chin phobia cure themselves. Do they watch endless repeats of the old Match of the Day? Conquering the fear of beautiful women sounds like a better idea.

Finally, the greatest named phobia and one you will never see in a newspaper report is my favourite – hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – the fear of long words.