Oh, the shame of it! It really is a dog’s life after all

Do dogs suffer from that peculiarly human emotion, embarrassment? The secretary of the Kennel Club says they know when they are being laughed at, but those who are victims of the fad for extreme grooming must surely feel more than that when they are done up like a knickerbocker glory or an explosion in a candyfloss factory.

A chihuahua must be mortified to find it has been named Fang, while a poodle is pained to be wearing a coat in a tartan that is incompatible with its pedigree. How must a proud Jack Russell feel, when sitting in a café, to be patted on the head and called “doggy” by a succession of strangers?

I suspect quite a number of golden retrievers don’t care to draw attention to themselves by fetching sticks and, as gundogs, particularly resent the fact that the stick was not actually shot by their owner. I would even suggest that hyper-intelligent sheepdogs find sheepdog trials, well, a bit of a trial. The way they crouch so low in the grass looks very much like a cringe; the way they hang their heads makes them appear abashed, as if they wish they could just get on with the job without their handler making an exhibition of himself with all that unnecessary whistling.

In this case, it is the dog which is embarrassed for its handler, standing over there, all Barboured-up, holding a fancy shepherd’s crook and shouting random instructions such as “come by” and “away to me” while the sheepdog goes about the business of the gather, the fetch and the drive. It’s hard enough dealing with a bunch of jittery Swaledales without all those distractions.

Jamie Oliver appears to be “on manoeuvres,” as they say in politics. In an interview in The Daily Telegraph last week, he said he wouldn’t mind having a sixth child. Remind you of anyone? If you want to get on in politics you have to breed. He probably wouldn’t name the child Sixtus but, with his love of Italy, he might call him Sesto.

In the interview, he was also critical of Theresa May over her decision to scrap free school lunches. Next thing they will be talking of him as a possible next Tory leader. Watch out for the double-breasted suit.

Insiders who have had a chance to watch extracts from Jamie Oliver’s next TV cookery show say they noticed a change of tone. “Get your old capon out,” the chef says, “andd request the scullion to remove the entrailstrails and the feathery accoutrements, then hen throw it with not inconsiderable ble force into a non-stick cauldron. Pourur over half a goblet of virginal olive oil and add some chopped onions which ich nanny has prepared for you, along long with a bouquet garni of lovage, e, savoury and fresh stinging nettles. ttles.

“Now I’m going to put the cauldron on the fire and cook at a temperature erature of open hearth mark 4 and leave ave it there for six hours. Add some torn up kale and there you have it. ‘Bishi, bashi, boshi,’ as Julius Caesar said back in 55 BC. Capon-in-a-cauldron. uldron. Immeasurably pleasurable!”

I have just got back from the Amazon rainforest where I have been making a documentary. While I was there, I came across a fascinating indigenous tribe known

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion as the Emoji and I lived with them for several weeks. They were suspicious of me at first, but I put on a permanent smiley face and they eventually accepted me. The fascinating thing about the Emoji is that they are extrem extremely verbose and their language is almo almost impossible for an outsider to learn. After several days, I managed to maste master “hello”, which consists of 17 syllabl syllables. The Emoji think any word of less th than seven syllables is unacc unacceptably curt. It takes them 20 minut minutes just to say: “This would be a good d day for hunting giant geckos.”

Wh When they go out hunting they stop being so talkative, so their prey is not awa aware of their presence. When they wan want to communicate, they scratch a sy symbol on a large leaf and hold it up to show you. The symbols con consist of just a few jagged lines or squ squiggles, but they all have a pa particular meaning. After a while, IwI was able to decipher the ones wh which said “Stop scrunching so nois noisily on the rainforest floor” and “Can I borrow one of your poisontipped arrows?” and also: “There’s a jaguar right behind you.”