Monty Don's dog garden! The Queen's new dog! Goodwoof! Too much dog?

Also, photos of Michael McIntyre doing something quite unlikely, a great date recommendation, and Dennis farting in front of Dame Jilly.

Hmmm. Did you see the cover of The Telegraph Magazine on Saturday? Possibly not, so I’ll paste it below in that case.

I don’t disagree that we have as a country, potentially, gone a bit dog mad. (I couldn’t bring myself to write ‘barking’. Too obvious.) And that’s as a country which was pretty dog-mad in the first place. This week the first ever dog garden at Chelsea has been revealed, created by Monty Don. The Queen has just announced she’s adopted another dog, called Moley. Some of us are writing books about our dogs (OUT IN OCTOBER, you can pre-order it HERE if you like), and there are now dog festivals. Personally, I think these are all reasons to be cheerful, but I can see - if you’re not a dog person - that you may be feeling a bit eye-rolly.

If you ARE that sort of person, you absolutely wouldn’t have been anywhere near Goodwood over the weekend, when it temporarily became Goodwoof. I touched on this festival couple of weeks ago, but it was so magnificent that I’m revisiting it all over again. Thousands of people, thousands of dogs, sunshine, ice cream, dog tarot readers, dog massage, dog races, a best dressed competition for dog AND owners, readings from the likes of Clare Balding, Michael Morpurgo, and Jack Dee, plus Kevin McCloud judging the Barkitecture competition, where various very smart architect firms slog it out for the prize of best dog kennel. Oh, it was all too much in the very best possible way. But I’ve managed to boil it down into my five favourite moments, so here you go…

(If you’re one of the eye-rollers, I’d skip straight to the next item about Michael McIntyre. And if you don’t like Michael OR dogs, well, I’m sorry, but I think you may be beyond help.)

5. Bill Bailey giving Dennis and Beano a quick dog training lesson.

   

   Bill Bailey, very much a dog man, was at Goodwoof in a very natty suit and panama, and Mum and I bumped into him in the bar on Sunday morning, whereupon he pulled a treat out of a bag and immediately made Beano (Mum’s dog) and Dennis sit for him. Very commanding, Bill Bailey. I practically sat at the same time.

   4. Yvette the crystal healer

Animal healer Yvette was based in a teepee, so in Mum, Dennis, Beano and I went for a session. Are there any issues, she asked of our dogs, whereupon I said yes recall wasn’t exactly perfect, and also that Dennis had recently been quite boisterous with other puppies. Yvette reached for a bag of rose quartz and amethyst and said they were calming crystals. She rubbed them up and down Dennis’s back while telling us that dogs are very susceptible to crystal healing, because while humans only have seven chakras, apparently dogs have 35! She gave me a little bag of rose quartz and amethyst to take with me, but I’m not sure I can put them anywhere near Dennis because he’ll only eat them*. Apparently you can get dog collars with specific crystals in them now - worth a shot?

*UPDATE: I left the kitchen for three minutes yesterday afternoon, after writing this, and returned to find the little bag of crystals savaged on the kitchen floor, the amethyst rejected but the rose quartz…vanished. Very small, don’t worry. I will report back as to whether this has any noticeable effect.

3. Meeting Seamus the Irish wolfhound

   

Seamus is the Irish Guards’ mascot, their 17th mascot. Tradition stipulates that their doggy mascot has to be named after a High King of Ireland, so his proper name is Turlough Mór, after a 12th century king, but he goes by the name of Seamus most of the time and is apparently ‘one of the lads’ back at barracks where he has his own room. He’s quite famous from various military parades and also from meeting the Princess of Wales on St Patrick’s Day. Dennis was understandably nervous of Seamus at first - David meeting Goliath stuff - but soon overcame those nerves and craned his nose in the air towards Seamus’s bottom for a good sniff, and then they were pals (silly David didn’t even think to do this when he confronted Goliath!).

2. The Fastest Dog competition.

Three dogs at a time, racing in lanes. Mum held Dennis at the start line while I called his name from the other end. His first ever running race! Essentially his first sports day! Unfortunately, he came last (with a time of 7.4 seconds), but the spectacle of him hurtling towards me made me cry with laughter. And as weary parents across the country will soon be telling teary children, it’s the taking part that counts.

1. Judging the Chien Charmant competition.

Angus the dachshund on the left; Roger the terrier on the right

This was what we might call the best six legs competition, ie the best dressed dog and the best-dressed owner. Ten different dogs and owners had been scouted among the crowds on Sunday, and they all then paraded on stage in front of the judges - Jodie Kidd (with her dachshunds, Dave and Didi), Tom Felton (Draco from Harry Potter, with his Labradors Boris and Forest), brilliant florist Nikki Tibbles who also runs the Wild At Heart dog foundation, Strictly dancer Karen Hauer, and me with Dennis, all overseen by the dashing presenter, Scott Wimsett.

First prize, we decided, had to go to a very charming couple of rescue dogs called Margarita and Audrey, with second prize to a small sausage called Winston, wearing the same stripey shirt as his owner, and third prize to a terrier not unlike Dennis, called Roger. Heaven, the whole thing. Although Dennis did a wee on stage because he drunk too much water before going on. Or maybe it was nerves. Not sure, but we had a truly wonderful day all round. Can’t recommend it enough if you fancy it next year.

Scott with one of Jodie’s dachshunds, Jodie with another, me and Dennis, Tom (Labradors Boris and Forest just out of shot) 💙

Pictures of the week

GOODNESS these make me laugh. It’s Michael McIntyre playing padel looking, as someone else said last week, as much like Michael McIntyre playing padel as you would imagine. Although he was actually pretty nifty. My pal Hols organised the Alfred Dunhill Padel Classic, held at the Hurlingham Club in Fulham last week, and it was v jolly. A two-day padel event at the club and, although I wasn’t playing, I went along as ‘support’, which largely meant cheering on the ‘athletes’ and sitting in hospitality with a glass of wine and an ice cream.

Do we think it’s pronounced padel like paddle, or pa-del like Manuel from Fawlty Towers might say it? A friend asked me that last week and I confidently declared the former - paddle - on the basis that pa-del is a bit like saying English people referring to Bathelona in a Spanish accent.

Anyway, although I’ve never actually played what’s often called the fastest growing sport in the world, I haven’t let that stop me from writing about it. I wrote a Tel column about it this time two years ago, when the Bamford Club in the Cotswolds had just opened two padel courts, causing a major drop in the productivity levels of ship brokers and hedge funders who live in the area because they were constantly thrashing it out on court. ‘We’ve all dived in in the most major way,’ one mole told me excitedly at the time, ‘many have never done more exercise in their lives.’ Rackets apparently kept selling out in the Bamford Club shop, which was impressive considering they cost £400 a pop. ‘People are rocking up and buying 4 ‘just in case,’’ added my mole.

I did some digging and discovered that Gleneagles had just opened two courts, as had a hotel in the Maldives, and the gazillion-star Nihi Sumba in Indonesia. British billionaire Joe Lewis had just had a padel court installed on his 98m superyacht. An estate agent who looks after the footballer belt of Cheshire told me that having a padel court at your house was the new swimming pool.

Now it’s at the Hurlingham, where the UK’s first ever floating padel court was installed last week. Bentley had provided cars for various important people during the event, but a Hurlingham groundsman had warned them a few days earlier that they’ve been having trouble with cars at the club recently. Not nicked or keyed. Come on, this is Hurlingham. No, apparently the peacocks in the lush, 42-acre grounds have taken to pecking some of the members’ grandest, shiniest cars. So please park your Bentley/Range Rover/Rolls/Maserati carefully if you’re off there for a spot of tennis (or indeed padel), this week.

Recommendations of the week

The stage as we sat; the stage during the interval

Phew. Quite a busy week, because I also went to Regents Park Open Air Theatre last Monday to see a musical that’s transferred here from Broadway. Called Shucked, it’s a sweet, funny old-fashioned story in many ways, about a make-believe place in America called Cob County, where the cob crop fails sending our heroine out into the big bad world to find a solution. The outing reminded me what a totally magical spot this is in the summer. A couple of ducks flew overhead and quacked as the sky darkened, just before the interval, and you never get that in an overheated, cramped West End theatre, do you? Very good date spot on a sunny evening, if you need one any time soon. But take a coat (plus maybe a blanket) no matter how balmy it seems that day, because it was so hot last Monday I dressed as if I was off to the beach, and my bare knees were quite chilly come 9pm. There are various things on there this summer, look ‘em up HERE.

Nonsense Cheerfulness of the week

Bit indulgent, and I’ve mentioned this on Instagram already, but my Jilly Cooper interview was in You Mag on Sunday, after I went to see her a few weeks ago. You can read the piece HERE. She really was as wonderful as everyone who’s met her says. Proper National Treasure, although I’m sorry to say I didn’t get a single juicy detail about the new series of Rivals (filming’s just started) because Jilly’s been strictly forbidden by Disney to say anything on that subject. Although, at last week’s Baftas, the country’s new heartthrob Danny Dyer let slip that he’s learning polo for his role as Fred Fred, leaving his arse feeling ‘uncomfortably sore’.

It was the first interview (will it be the last?) that I’ve ever taken Dennis along to, and Jilly wore her Barbour terrier jersey specially having learned that he was a terrier in advance. She didn’t even mind when he farted during our interview. I only mentioned this when I smelt something unpleasant halfway through a question and I worried that if I DIDN’T say anything Jilly would think it was me.

‘That’s alright, darling,’ Jilly told him, ‘you can do whatever you want, can’t you?’ Which, coincidentally, is the creed that Dennis seems to live by.

PS. This fairly silly newsletter reached 6,000 subscribers last week. THANK YOU. I don’t want to sound as if I’m making an Oscar speech but I am really grateful, to my parents, to my colleagues, to God… Only joking. But thanks, seriously 😊

PPS. Next week is yet another bank holiday in the UK (May: the Ferris Bueller of the calendar year), so this will be coming to you on Wednesday morning instead.