THE DAISY DOG – A MONGREL WITH A PEDIGREE

From my ‘Crossing the headlines’ column in Dog World (6th May 2015).

Have you got some bunting gathering dust at the back of your cupboard? Well get ready to dust it off and hang it out in the streets.

Why? Well haven’t you heard? There’s some great news. The Daisy dog has finally reached these shores. Hurrah!

Yes, the very first litter of “Kennel Certificate registered Daisy puppies” have been born in the UK. You can take your pick from a range of colours; from the run-of-the-mill blacks and chocolates to the rather more fitting creams and champagnes.

DOGS IN THE MEDIA: 2015 FEATURE

A feature article written for Dog World (14th April 2015) looking at how the media portrays dogs and dog ownership.

Years ago, when still at college, I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist. Then, in the autumn of 1991, by a series of strange coincidences, I met a lady that would completely turn that idea on its head.

She was an American soul singing megastar and we were to be friends for the next ten or so years. Whenever she came to the UK I would hang out with her, go backstage at her shows, go to dinner, to rehearsals and travel to swanky hotels in the shiniest of stretch limousines. A pretty fantastic experience for an impressionable youth and from the outside it did indeed look like the perfect lifestyle however one only had to dig not too very far beneath the beautiful veneer to uncover a world rife with paranoia and the irritant of constantly being watched, the bane of this woman’s life were journalists and the media – especially the British media who, back then, were notoriously brutal.