Blue Peter woe
I had a mad dog. He had to go to obedience classes.

In six weeks, Snoop learned a) how to sit on command b) not to sniff the other dogs’ arses and c) very little else. It was clear that he was less than a model student.

Then it was announced that for the following week’s class, there would be a Very Special Guest. John Noakes, Shep and a Blue Peter camera crew would be coming down to film a doggy obedience class. We were to be on best behaviour, and arse-sniffing would not be tolerated.

Come the big day, half of the village turned up for the filming. Those of us taking part in the filming were greeted like Wonka Golden Ticket holders, with a mixture of wild applause and thinly veiled envy. Then Noakes turned up with Shep in an open-topped Triumph Stag. He was, at this time, at the height of his powers as the coolest guy on Earth, and he was hailed with a deafening ovation.

Shep may have been behaving himself and acting the consummate TV professional, but the other dogs in the class certainly weren’t. The TV cameras, the lights, the crew, the disruption, and not to mention half the village hammering on the windows made for very twitchy canines. My sixth Scary-sense was twitching. Something unusual was about to happen.

“Get down Shep!” shouted Noakes.

“Get down Snoop!” I countered, closely followed by “BUGGER!” as the little sod slipped his collar and set off on a grand tour of the hall sniffing arses as I floundered in his wake.

Flailing several yards behind my quarry, I could only watch with horror as Snoop’s nose connected with Shep’s superstar arse while the masses outside could only howl with laughter. Then, his arse-sniffing duties complete, Snoop went for the master. The red mist was down. Noakes was in his sights. I couldn’t look.

This time Snoop ignored the celebrity arse and went for the leg. John Noakes’s leg. The leg that had jumped out of airplanes, climbed Nelson’s Column, had plummetted down a bobsleigh track at ninety miles per hour. The leg that had quite possibly nestled against Valerie Singleton every Monday and Thursday on the Blue Peter sofa. My dog was screwing John Noakes’s leg.

“Get down...err...dog!”

Fair play to the four-legged pervert, he clung on for dear life, a determined look on his face, while TV production people tried to separate randy dog from the talent. We were asked to leave.

None of the other dogs tried to shag Noakes’s leg, the bloody traitors. It was hours before they finished filming and the crowds out outside melted away so the pair of us could leg it home.

School for the next week was predictably hellish, especially when the item on dog training was shown on Thursday’s edition of Blue Peter. Virtually all of my friends had managed to get on TV as part of the crowd peeering in through the windows, while I was edited out completely, and didn’t even get a Blue Peter badge for my pains. My humiliation was complete.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 11 Nov 2004, 12:57, Reply)