The following story came to us from Dennis Ocola, a fan in Peru who was so taken by Algie, Roger's pig, that he decided to turn his hand to a permanent memento of the inflatable animal - which in turn thrilled Roger Waters himself when he became an owner of a couple of these. Read on for the full, fascinating story, and click the thumbnails for larger, higher quality versions of each picture...

After the Roger Waters concert here in Peru (March 12th, 2007), I was so infatuated by the inflatable pig that I wanted to have a personal souvenir, so I decided to make a replica.

I've never done any work in porcelain before, so first I contacted a ceramic master. After printing a lot of pictures of the pig, we did the shape of the pig... and for the graffitis... I had to design them on Illustrator, to make ceramic stickers (these are special stickers that go inside the oven with the ceramic piece)

So I made a bunch of these pigs, for the Peruvian fans... and I even sold some of these to a Chilean fan that lived here in Lima...

At this point, I made 2 versions of the pig, the PERUVIAN PIG (a replica from the show here in Peru):

And the CALATO PIG ("calato" means "naked" for Peruvians), that is almost the same just without the graffitis.

So... I got the idea of sending Roger Waters the Peruvian pig as a gift for visiting and playing here for the first time. I sent him 2 pigs, one Peruvian (my gift) and the other one naked, asking if he could sign the naked one and send it back to Lima. I sent the package July 7th 2007...

It was around November, and I'd already lost all hope of receiving any answer from Roger, until one day I received a package containing this:

I couldn't believe it... it was here, in one piece! Not even scratched or anything... and signed by Roger. I shared this story on the Peruvian forum, and it was great - everybody felt that this was like an odyssey. Anyway, that pig is some kind of celebrity here between Peruvian fans.

A couple of months later, somebody found the Rolling Stone interview with Roger about the history of the flying pig, and at the end of the interview Roger says:

"I've received four-inch long porcelain replicas of the pig from Chile and Peru, but with all the graffiti in Spanish, exactly copied onto them. They're really beautiful. They sit on my mantelpiece, at home. I treasure them."

And once again, here in Peru it was a party again, because now that part of the story is there, in an interview, by Rolling Stone magazine.

By the way, the pig that Roger received from Chile, was the same one I sold to the Chilean fan; I guess he just had the same idea of sending Roger one pig as a gift.

Here in Peru (actually just on the Peruvian Pink Floyd Forum www.pinkfloydperu.com) this story is well known, also on the Chilean Forum (www.pinkfloyd.cl), and in Brazil (orkut).

Right now, I'm working on producing CALATO PIGS for Chilean fans. Also, some Brazilian fans contacted me, and send me a lot of pictures of the Sao Paulo pig. I designed the graffitis again on my computer, and I created another replica...

Oh! And here is my photographic version of PIGS (THREE DIFFERENT ONES):

Well, I am so proud of these piggies, that I made versions of them as t-shirts, patches, cell phone wallpapers, and right now the Peruvian forum is using the porcelain Algie as their logo. Here are some pictures...

It's an army of Algies!

Right now I just have one pig in stock (the Peruvian design). And I'm not considering on making more since I need a large number of orders to make enough money to pay the production cost. So, this is the story so far... what started like a simple idea, is now something that I'm very proud...

Our thanks to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for sharing his story with the Floyd community.