Over the years people have left behind countless things at the venues I’ve worked in. Some bits and pieces you’d expect, coats, bags, passports, house keys, wallets, phones – oh, plenty of phones.

I’ve found a fair amount of instruments unsurprisingly but often left for surprising lengths of time, their owners never to return in some cases. I’ve never been able to figure why through a simple process of elimination bands didn’t click where that precious guitar was and just call up. Who knows, they may well need it again.

Somewhat more oddly I’ve found underwear, false teeth, porn and also letters, worryingly stalker-like, scribbled to their quarries and then left in the hope that they’d find their mark somehow. Some were directed to customers spied across the venue, others more unsettling still were sinister paeans to members of staff.

Delightful.

But there was one time about a year ago at The Ruby Lounge when something even more recherché turned up.

It had been a long night into an early morning and a venue full of folk dancing to obscure Chinese R’n’B and Hip Hop. Well, I say obscure – it was to me, it could easily have been a set of wall-to-wall chart-toppers of course.

Anyhow, after everyone had filed out we gave the venue its usual once over and began to tidy up a little. After a while someone finds a carrier bag stashed behind a couch with something inside. It’s heavy and smells really, really bad.

A couple of bar staffers take a peek inside but can’t work out quite what the devil it is. The thing is lumpy, roundish and glistens with a brown and yellow hue.

We haul it to the bar and unveil it to get a clearer look.

It’s a pig’s head.

Glazed.

Cooked.

Bagged.

And carried into a nice warm venue for a few hours.