Guy Fawkes, making a star appearance on the village green bonfire last weekend, started to snuffle and snore, just seconds before being torched.

Proceedings were halted while the organisers investigated. Hiding under the leaves, they found a spiky little ball of a hedgehog – presumably casing the joint as a possible venue for his or her winter staycation.

A rapid, eviction order was placed and the lucky creature was dispatched into the night to find a less dangerous place of hibernation.

In 1605, when the real Guy Fawkes was planning to assassinate King James 1, hedgehogs were considered pests with a high price on their heads.

Even up to the last century they were killed on sight. It was believed they ate eggs (which is occasionally true) and attacked chickens (which is false). The most serious allegation against them was that they milked cows, which is also false. Probably the most outrageous allegation was that they had two anal passages, down to the slightly odd shape of the hedgehog’s stool.

In these enlightened times we know that the hedgehog has only one anus. Instead they have become the butt of many jokes. Recently the funniest one liner at the Edinburgh fringe was voted to be “Hedgehogs. Why can’t they just share the hedge?”

In my mis-spent youth I recall jolly trips to the pub ordering two pints of larger and a packet of crisps please while the sounds of Splodgenessabounds rang out on the jukebox (check them out on YouTube if you don’t remember them). And the flavour of crisps? Well, hedgehog, of course. In 1981 Hedgehog Foods Ltd. decided, as a joke, to produce hedgehog flavoured crisps. As they were actually flavoured with pork fat, it wasn’t long before Hedgehog Foods met the Office of Fair Trading in court on a charge of false advertising. In a bizarre twist, a settlement was reached when the company recruited gypsies, who actually ate baked hedgehogs, to recreate the flavour as closely as possible.

Labels were changed from ‘hedgehog flavoured’ to ‘hedgehog flavour’ and business resumed as normal.

As a gardener I would encourage everyone to attract hedgehogs into the garden, especially if you are gardening organically. Whilst not the best pets for a cuddle (apart from the prickles, they are flea-infested and can carry a bacteria responsible for food poisoning), they make good garden visitors because of their pest-destroying activity. They devour slugs, cutworms, beetles, caterpillars and mice and can even kill an adder – a remarkable feat for an apparently inoffensive creature.

I was once asked to design a garden to encourage hedgehogs to stay and this is entirely possible. In the summer months put out a saucer of water or some tinned pet food (not bread and milk) in the evening and they’ll soon get the point.

At this time of year they are looking for somewhere to snooze under a pile of leaves or a hedge, where they will stay, hardly breathing, until March or April.

So don’t be too tidy with the leaves. And, unless you want them baked, don’t have a bonfire, or at least check it carefully, before setting it alight.