5th May 2010

Well. What can I say? Today was Dukie’s television debut and the last animal Asbo sequence that I am doing for This Morning.  He was perfectly behaved in the green room, settled well and stayed calm for the three hours that we were there. He practiced his routine whilst we were waiting for our slot and wasn’t distracted by all the coming and goings back stage.  He went into the studio for a pre-record and again went through his routine perfectly.  Unfortunately though we weren’t given a rehearsal for some unknown reason and when we went into the studio to do our live piece we passed huge wall monitors that were showing the early training with Dukie.  The poor little terrier was really distracted by the monitors as he could see and hear Corinna and me calling his name and clicking the clickers and his head was swivelling left and right as we took our places on the sofa.  This slightly threw Corinna as well as it was unexpected but she did a great job in asking him to focus on her.  He lay quietly on the rug when Corinna asked him to go into a down.  When a giant bird appeared on the screen he ignored the monitor between the two sofas and stood calmly watching the bird on the bank of monitors at the opposite end of the studio.  The appearance of the bird took me and Philip Schofield by surprise but Dukie took it all in his stride.  It was all going so well but when Corinna stood up to take off Dukie’s lead so that he could perform his routine she forgot to ask him to sit first and just released him.  He promptly trotted off to the far end of the studio and then left the building through a door that had been left open! We were all laughing so much that from that moment on it all fell apart completely. Have you ever tried recalling a terrier when you are laughing? Forget it. Corinna is brilliant on television and I will never forget the sight of her standing in the middle of the set sans dog saying ‘And we had hula hoops and everything’.  Hilarious. She and Dukie should have their own show.  On the plus side though Dukie would normally be gone for over two hours but this time Corinna was able to retrieve him after a few minutes but of course by this our air time had gone.  At least we made the nation laugh! 

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