WHAT is the most unusual item you could carry in hand luggage on a flight? How about a pig's head.

Liz Richards, general manager of Pilot Theatre, the resident company at York Theatre Royal, has had to do exactly that.

"I am going through Customs with a pig's head," she said before Pilot's cast and production team set off to Portugal earlier this week. "I was informed by Air France that it is considered a dangerous weapon, so it must be held in baggage."

The pig's head is in fact a replica, to be used by Pilot when performing an excerpt from artistic director Marcus Romer's production of Lord Of The Flies, at a night of European theatre under the olive trees in Lisbon.

Updated: 10:26 Saturday, September 27, 2003