Well, the British public may have slumbered through the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent insults but they’re wide awake now and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall must take the credit. How did he succeed where others have failed? He suggested that there’s no logical reason for not eating dogs.

The reaction has been predictably rabid. Dogs hold incredible sway over the typical British heart. But HFW wasn’t suggesting we eat Seeing Eye dogs or those clever drug sniffers or those heroic mountain rescuers, and he certainly wasn’t suggesting doggie factory farms. This is a man who’s in the forefront of campaigning for ethical meat production. No. He was just saying. Eat pig, eat dog. And if not, why not? Either stop being sentimental or go vegetarian. We’re all part of the food chain anyhoo, as Timothy Treadwell learned to his hippydippy cost.

Hugh F-W strikes me as a sensible man with a reasonable mission: to get families back around the dining table, eating simple, affordable, home-cooked food. I was first aware of him when he was a fellow guest at a Daily Telegraph lunch. That was at least fifteen years ago so he must have been a very young man indeed. He brought along a loaf  of his own bread for us to eat with the cheese course and I remember thinking ‘he’ll go far.’ It was a refreshing gesture and particularly charming at the kind of party where politicians float in on a cloud of flatulent self-regard. 

But now Hugh has dropped The Big One. Eat dogs??? He might as well have tried to get into the Royal Enclosure at Ascot wearing flipflops. I pray his career survives.

Personally I would eat dog. I’ve already eaten horse, alligator, kangaroo, caribou, snails and bunny wabbits so to object to dog would be daft. And I would like to begin with the all-night yapper at No. 47.