When I was a young reporter, one of our sub-editors was a keen gardener who moaned for ever about his neighbour’s dog crapping all over his otherwise tidy lawns. Eventually we suggested he should put a six-foot, steel wire fence all the way round it. He baulked at the cost, but went ahead with it when we reporters agreed to help in its erection. So, on the appointed Sunday we all arrived to erect this monstrosity, and when it was completed he thanked us with the comment “this’ll keep the little bugger out”, and sent us on our way without even the offer of a pint to quench our thirsts.

But we didn’t go far. Someone suggested that we should gather dog dirt, in bulk, from the surrounding pavements, so after eventually arming ourselves with a shovel and a brush we collected a heaped shovelful of the stuff then, at dead of night, we returned to catapult it over the fence and, as luck would have it, pretty much all over his lawn.

On the Monday morning he naturally blamed his neighbour’s dog and wondered how it could have done so much crap in one night and, more to the point, how it had breached his expensive fortifications.

Back in the office, for several years — until the dog died — we shared a private joke by always referring to it as “Wonder Dog”. We never told him about our little escapade, and it baffled him for years!