Sophie Dahl reunited with her ‘Houdini’ lost tortoise
HER grandad Roald Dahl’s tale about two lonely souls finding companionship through a tortoise, Esio Trot, was turned into a heart-warming film in 2015 starring Dame Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman.
Now former supermodel Sophie Dahl has found herself at the centre of a real-life drama starring her own pet tortoise called Torty.
The 40-year-old, who has two children with her jazz musician husband, Jamie Cullum, reveals that Torty fled their Buckinghamshire home at the weekend before finding his way back via social media.
‘I woke up to a midnight text from a girlfriend asking whether Torty was missing because she’d seen on Facebook that a tortoise had been found a few streets away from our house,’ recounts Sophie, who left modelling to become a writer. ‘I don’t think so, I said. But I went downstairs to look for him. Not in his house.
‘I realised that I’d left the kitchen door open while I was making dinner and hadn’t seen him since then. We located the Facebook message leaver.
‘ It transpired that Torty had climbed down my kitchen stairs, walked through the garden, onto a public footpath and was found motoring up the street on his way to the local train station, via the train tracks. He was spotted by a very Good Samaritan, who scooped him up and took him home, where he had a sleepover with a rabbit, which is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to him in a decade.’ The blonde bombshell, whose parents are former actress Tessa Dahl and Carry On actor Julian Holloway, admits it’s not Torty’s first attempt to escape. ‘Last summer, Torty was found by a group of ramblers, walking up to the woods, a mile away from our house. The sun gives him the urge to move. Far away from us. ‘As soon as it gets hot, T is on an eternal quest for a lady tortoise. Although he’s chipped, he is a master escapologist and can dig, climb, and, it would appear, try to board trains. ‘He may be an ageing horny Houdini, but I was very happy when Jamie picked him up. ‘Thank you so much to all the dudes in our village that helped reunite us. He is now exhausted and fast asleep.’