Why is there a honey badger?

People keep asking why a fitness website has a honey badger in it. Some have asked politely. One asked in capitals. This page is the full, official and entirely truthful explanation, followed by some facts.

The official explanation

The honey badger was not my idea. He was the recommendation of a three-year independent study commissioned by the Body Reps Institute for Advanced Mustelid Studies. It's a real institute. It has a brass plaque, a car park, and a part-time receptionist called Margaret, who is very good on the phone.

The study followed 4,000 people learning anatomy across six counties and two time zones. Half of them learned from ordinary web pages. The other half learned from web pages with a honey badger on them. The badger group remembered 340 per cent more muscle names, ran faster and slept better, and one man in Swindon spontaneously learned the oboe. The other group mostly cried.

The results were peer-reviewed by a panel of leading experts, and then by the badger, who ate the report. I've since been told this counts as approval. In badger law, eating a document is the same as signing it.

On top of that, the Mustelid Inclusion in Fitness Content Act 2019 says any website giving exercise advice in the United Kingdom must contain at least one member of the weasel family per thousand words. I looked it up. It's in there, between the bit about fire exits and the bit about not calling squats "bum day" in a professional setting. I don't make the rules. I just follow them, closely, with a badger.

There's also a health and safety side. Every website is supposed to have a qualified first aider. The badger is not a qualified first aider, but he did once bite one, and I'm told some of it rubbed off.

Finally, in the interests of full transparency, the badger tested extremely well with a focus group of retired dinner ladies, a vicar, and a man in Plymouth who wouldn't give his name but said "yeah, go on then".

The actual explanation

None of that is true. There is no institute. There is no Margaret. The Act doesn't exist, and if it did, the badger would have eaten it.

The real reason is much shorter. I find honey badgers funny. Nasty, fearless little animals that pick fights with things hundreds of times their size and don't stop. I've wanted one on something for years. Now I've got a website. So here we are.

That's it. That's the whole explanation. He's probably not for everyone. He's always for me.

Twenty honey badger facts

1. A group of honey badgers is called a tribunal.
2. Honey badgers have no natural predators. Only natural victims.
3. He has never once read the terms and conditions, and he has agreed to nothing.
4. Honey badgers don't migrate. They decide that wherever they are is now theirs.
5. A honey badger once bit a lion. The lion now runs a small bed and breakfast in Dorset and doesn't like to talk about it.
6. Scientists have tried to measure a honey badger's resting heart rate. He has never rested. The scientists have, at length, in hospital.
7. His skin is so thick, tough and loose that if something grabs him, he can twist round inside it and get away.¹
8. In 1987 a honey badger was elected to a parish council in Shropshire by mistake. He served two full terms. Every pothole in the parish was filled within the hour. Nobody asked how.
9. Honey badgers cannot be insured. Three companies have tried. Two are no longer trading.
10. He stands about knee height, and six foot four in his own mind.
11. A honey badger can smell fear, weakness and an open packet of Hobnobs from four miles away.
12. He has never said "I'll start Monday". He has started everything he has ever thought of, immediately. Mostly fights.
13. If you play a honey badger a motivational speech, he will eat the speaker.
14. Despite the name, he isn't really there for the honey. He raids beehives mainly for the bee larvae.¹
15. The phrase "bite off more than you can chew" was invented by someone who had never met a honey badger. He simply chews more.
16. Honey badgers do not sleep. They lie down and plan.
17. His favourite lift is the deadlift, specifically deadlifting things that aren't his.
18. Every honey badger is legally a sole trader. None of them has ever filed a tax return. HMRC has stopped asking.
19. The honey badger has been asked to leave every gym in Britain, including two that haven't been built yet.
20. He has read this list. He disputes number 9. There were four companies.

Had enough badger? Back to Basic Training. He's there too, I'm afraid.