PS Haven’t we seen that cute period pooch before, Your Majesty?

SHE’S deaf, is missing a few teeth due to a saliva problem, and is very food-oriented, staring longingly at a sausage throughout our interview, whereas most female stars merely demand iced water. Nonetheless, she is the hardest-working actress in the UK, currently making doe eyes and waggling her rump at Rufus Sewell on ITV.

This is Tori, a nine-year-old tri-coloured Cavalier King Charles spaniel, currently upstaging Jenna Coleman in Victoria. I meet her at the home of her owner and trainer, Gill Raddings, whose company, Stunt Dogs & Animals, provides four-legged actors (Gill also tells me sternly that ‘border collies are eminently trainable,’ when I bring up my unruly trio).

It turns out this is not the first time Tori has played Victoria’s beloved companion Dash – she was also cast in Young Victoria, the 2009 film starring Emily Blunt. In fact, she is a costume drama doyenne, and has appeared in The Duchess with Keira Knightley, Midsomer Murders, Dickensian (she was thrown into the Thames), and To Walk Invisible, the new BBC drama about the Brontes.

‘I normally train rescue dogs – Battersea Dogs Trust will phone when they have a candidate – but for Young Victoria the casting was very specific,’ recalls Gill, who houses none of her dogs in kennels. ‘There are hundreds of paintings of Dash. So I went to a breeder who had a sevenmonth-old puppy who wasn’t good enough to show, as her mouth wasn’t formed correctly. But she was the mirror image of Dash. I had six weeks to train her for the film. The only difference is their sex. Tori is a bitch.’

So what qualities does Tori possess? ‘She is bold and not noise-sensitive,’ says Gill.

And is she a diva? ‘She likes to get very muddy, but she will stand on her bench and demand to be bathed, like a little princess. And she snores like a pig.’