Using magnets to give sharks a migraine? How very attractive

Every pet owner wonders what it might be like to be a pooch. Looking at our coddled, cosseted miniature pinscher, I suspect the heavenly reward for a blameless life must be rein-carnation in canine form.

A head waiter to serve your meals, a valet to groom you, a personal trainer to conduct your daily exercise — the humans in your household are really your slaves. you get tummy tickles on demand, no mortgage, no commute, no taxes, and you don’t even need to bother getting dressed in the mornings.

Chris Packham is patently devoted to his two poodles, Itchy and Scratchy, but he also envies them something rotten. ‘I would give anything to be another animal for just five minutes,’ he said fervently, as the dogs went romping through woods, intoxicated by the riot of scents and smells.

Inside The Animal Mind (BBC2) demonstrated how vividly a dog’s nose perceives the world. A moun-tain rescue dog called Fern, trained to pick up the faintest trace of a lost walker, tracked down a canister of meat hidden at the bottom of a lake.

racing over the water at the prow of a motor dinghy, Fern picked up the scent through 20ft of water and a yard of silt on the lake bed.

She looked as happy as any mutt, hanging its head out of a car window and Hoovering up the blizzard of smells. But even her senses were dull in comparison with the average butterfly, which can detect two or three atoms of pheromone across miles of rainforest.

Clouds of sniffer butterflies to catch drug smugglers at airports could be a wonderful innovation. Instead of customs men and body searches, you’d simply walk through a hothouse — anyone who came out smothered in cabbage whites and red admirals would be nabbed by the smuggling squad.

Packham registered the right blend of scientific knowledge and sheer wonderment at the alien senses of animals. One sequence, that demon-strated the sensitivity of a shark’s electrical receptors, was amazing: the killer fish can detect the heart-beat of its prey, but a magnet will give it a thumping migraine.

With a juicy lump of bait tethered within a ring of magnets, Packham watched as packs of sharks lunged at the meat and then shied away. Someone should invent magnetised wetsuits — guaranteed to repel sharks, though they might also attract mines and submarines.

Another supersense is the focus of The Taste (Channel 4), the most ill- conceived cookery programme ever aired. everything about it is revolting, from the outsized ladle-fuls of gourmet slop served up by the contestants, to the sight of the three judges talking with their mouths full.

each cook presents a large porcelain spoon, laden with bits of a meal — the meat, the veg, the sauce, the garnish, all crammed on there. Nigella Lawson and her fellow panellists shovel in as much as they can, and splutter out their verdicts while they chew.

With one serving of undercooked lamb, Nigella bit off more than she could swallow and had to spit it out into her hand. That sight was enough to put anyone off their supper.

The best food shows appeal to our eyes and to our imagination. Mary Berry’s sugar- sprinkled victoria sponges and chocolate profiteroles make our mouths water because the thought of them is so sweet and tempting.

We never see the food on The Taste, because it is not properly presented. At a restaurant with friends, you might fancy what your neighbour has on his dinner plate, but you wouldn’t want to take a bite off his fork.

The only element of this format that provides entertainment is the French accent of judge Ludo Lefebvre. He’s incomprehensible, like Arsene Wenger doing an Inspector Clouseau impression.

‘Arfaleetah!’ he shouted at one woman who was drizzling red wine into her recipe. ‘ All Far Lee Tar! Allf A Leet Arr!’ eventually she twigged: he wanted her to put in ‘half a litre’.

So, at the top of this review, Ludo’s ludicrous accent has earned The Taste this: ‘Anex Treugh Stair!’ ‘Aneks Drerr Sterr!’ An extra star!