Mystic Marcus: is the World Cup’s psychic pig really 100% accurate?

Name: Mystic Marcus.

Age: Eight.

Appearance: Porcine.

That’s not very nice. It’s OK. Mystic Marcus is a pig.

A mystic pig? A prognosticating pig.

Does that means he sniffs out truffles? Marcus sniffs out the future. In the past, he has predicted the winner of Wimbledon, foretold of Derby County’s failure to be promoted and divined the outcome of the Brexit vote.

Yeah, but what’s he done lately? He has just named the semi-finalists in this year’s World Cup.

He sounds like Some Pig. How does he operate? Faced with 32 apples set out in a circle, each with a national flag stuck in it, Marcus chose four.

How did he choose them? By eating them.

I’m not a pig behaviourist or anything, but isn’t it possible that Marcus, left to his own devices, would eat all 32 apples? You know nothing. It’s about which ones he eats first.

Which ones did he eat first? Those with the flags of Belgium, Argentina, Nigeria and Uruguay.

Audible sigh. Is this really news? It is in Nigeria – the odds of them reaching the semis are currently 33/1.

In that case, Marcus must have eaten the wrong apple. Don’t be so sure. According to his owner, Juliette Stevens, Marcus has so far been right 100% of the time.

How can that possibly be true? According to Stevens, his powers derive from his being the seventh piglet of the seventh piglet. “He also predicted Trump would win,” she said. “I said: ‘Marcus, you’ve definitely got that wrong.’ And then look what happened.”

Yeah, thanks a bunch, Marcus. He can’t help it. “For one football match he didn’t eat any of the apples,” said Stevens, “and it turned out to be a draw. It’s really bizarre.”

There’s a long and idiotic tradition of animals predicting World Cup matches, isn’t there? Yes. You may recall Paul the octopus, who in 2010 correctly predicted the result of all seven of Germany’s World Cup matches, and went on to tip Spain to win in the final. Then he died.

RIP Paul. For a cephalopod, you sure knew a lot about football. And this year, Achilles the psychic cat of St Petersburg successfully predicted Russia would beat Saudi Arabia in the first match.

What Russian cat would dare otherwise? Meanwhile, in Yekaterinburg, Spartak the clairvoyant lemur went the wrong way and picked the Saudis.

Another psychic animal fraudster exposed. That’s the last time I let a lemur tell me which way to bet.

Do say: “I knew England had no chance.”

Don’t say: “Marcus – should I buy bitcoin?”