Although no longer a pet-owner – or, to put it from a pet’s perspective, a human owned by an animal – I have been in the past, and had a foot in the two most popular camps due to sharing my home with both a dog and a cat. The former required more physical input on my part courtesy of the two daily walks in all weathers all year round, and as we tended to trek to the nearest park within walking distance I became accustomed to seeing the same fellow dog-walkers on each visit. At least three durable friendships grew out of these encounters, though there did also seem to be an abundance of little old ladies walking little old dogs at the time. I eventually ended up doing the shopping for some of them and they proved to be a font of fascinating recollections of the neighbourhood from their pre-war youths. One of them had a couple of dogs and had once had a cat, though her feline companion disappeared one day never to be seen again; not knowing what had become of the cat put her through all kinds of agonies and she told me how she’d spent months wandering up and down the locality in search of him, a sadly futile hunt that left her utterly bereft. I can understand if that sounds melodramatic, but it helps to put one’s self in the shoes of a senior citizen without a spouse or family, one dependent on furry friends for company.
Equally, those with humans in the household can often incorporate a pet into the family unit, and if they are a kind, compassionate bunch, said pet can be as valued a member of the team as any of the two-legs. Therefore, the sudden loss of a pet can be genuinely upsetting; it’s traumatic enough when they pass away, but if they vanish either by accident or design the anguish the owner experiences is even more pronounced; again, it’s the not-knowing where they’ve gone or whether they’re dead or alive that intensifies the upset. The healing properties of both cats and dogs as companions can contribute towards the mental well-being of the individual owner and, for many, can complete a family; bearing this in mind, it’s no wonder their loss can prove so devastating. Some might recall the late dancing celebrity Lionel Blair pleading tearfully for the return of his stolen dogs on TV a few years back, but the theft of dogs is no new phenomenon, alas. Virginia Woolf acknowledged this way back in 1933 in her wonderful novella, ‘Flush’, an imagined biography of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel that deals with the pooch’s dog-napping, stolen away from the comfort of his middle-class home on Wimpole Street and held hostage in the grim Dickensian rookery of St Giles. This section of the story is actually based upon real incidents when Flush was stolen three times, and ends in the book with the distraught Barrett paying the thief six guineas for the dog’s return.
For far too long, the wilful and deliberate theft of a cat or a dog hasn’t been properly recognised in law, with a pet seen as nothing more than ‘property’– falling under the 1968 Theft Act alongside household chattels, on a legal level with a TV set or a microwave. Although the theft of a pet under this law theoretically comes with a maximum prison sentence of seven years, convictions are notoriously low, and the naming of pet abduction as an offence could lead to greater powers of sentence. A lobbying group called Pet Theft Awareness has consistently campaigned for a change in the law and for pets to be reclassified as being of more value than inanimate objects. Anna Firth, the Conservative MP for Southend West, has added her voice to the growing clamour for fresh legislation to address this imbalance by drawing up a private members’ bill called the Pet Abduction Bill, which would make the theft of cats and dogs a separate criminal offence in its own right. ‘I just find it unbelievable that we treat the loss of a living creature, a member of our family, as if it is a power tool or a laptop,’ says Firth.
Firth’s comments echo similar sentiments made by the likes of Pet Theft Awareness. The group published findings in a recent report that claimed cat theft in particular had quadrupled since 2015 and saw a 40% increase between 2020 and 2021. These findings came hot on the heels of the notable escalation in dog theft during the pandemic, a time when the Government was promising to make canine abduction a criminal offence yet never got round to it. Priti Patel, Home Secretary at the time, had said: ‘Stealing a pet is an awful crime which can cause families great emotional distress whilst callous criminals line their pockets.’ She went on to add that a new law would recognise that ‘animals are far more than just property and will give police an additional tool to bring these sickening individuals to justice.’ Such measures were intended to be included in the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, but when that legislation was shamefully dropped last year, further promises were made for a separate law that would deal with the theft of dogs – even though it failed to materialise. However, perhaps something will now finally be done to address what is undoubtedly an intensely upsetting crime.
Anna Firth is aware of the occasional indifference of the police to pet theft when she says: ‘Taking a pet is a particularly cruel crime, but it adds insult to injury when a devastated family calls the police and they do very little about it because the pet is considered as no more significant than a mobile phone under the present law. Anyone who has a cat or dog knows that they are members of your family.’ As things currently stand, it seems it’s something of a lottery as to how serious a police force takes the theft of a pet, depending where the pet-owner happens to live; with a new law in place for England and Northern Ireland, such a crime would hopefully provoke a more uniformed and committed response, as the alteration from theft to abduction is a significant one; and though a private members’ bill faces more of a challenge to become law, this is an issue that concerns almost half the households in the country and is expected to find government support as well of that of the public.
Along with ongoing calls to place cats alongside dogs when it comes to a motorist being legally required to report an accident should they run one over, the inclusion of cats in this proposed legislation is long overdue recognition that our two most popular domesticated animals are on a level playing field. Annabel Berdy of Cats Protection backs the move. ‘If you included dogs from the outset without cats, given that those are the two companion animals,’ she says, ‘it might drive exploitative criminals or people looking to steal animals for money towards cats.’ She agrees that any new law needs to acknowledge ‘the very similar and emotional value and attachment that owners will have with their cats, as they do with dogs.’ As someone who was privileged to share their home with an undeniably entertaining feline/canine double act for a decade, I have to say both brought something different to the table, but asking me if I’m a dog person or a cat person is a bit like asking a doting parent which of their children is their favourite. As far as I’m concerned, this proposed legislation is belated recognition of the importance that both a dog and a cat possess for the person they’ve picked on the basis that person will probably give them a good life; and they certainly pay you back for that investment in spades.
© The Editor
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The first time one sees a famous face in the flesh as a child tends to stick in the memory; those tiny figures crammed into the cathode ray tube were difficult to imagine outside of that context, to visualise as full-size, bona-fide people just like everyone else, so it’s no wonder encountering them beyond the box was borderline surreal. At a young age I remember seeing Richard Whiteley filling up his car at a petrol station on Kirkstall Road, just across from the Yorkshire Television studios; so he was definitely the first, even though he was only a household name in the YTV region at the time, still being a decade away from network celebrity via a certain afternoon institution. The next famous face I saw was in 1976, when I was spending a few days at my grandparents’ home during the school summer holidays; they lived in Huddersfield, and journeying into the town centre with my grandma was a regular outing as we shopped for something that would keep me occupied, usually a book or a comic. As anyone of a certain age will remember from those rationed television days, BBC1 would schedule a holiday mix of repeats for younger viewers on weekday mornings, usually containing one of the four foreign serials – ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘The Flashing Blade’, ‘Belle et Sébastien’, and ‘The White Horses’; the year in question also saw the line-up include the rerunning of early 70s editions of ‘Vision On’, the brilliantly imaginative series theoretically produced for the deaf, but enjoyed by all children who saw it.
A fortnight off this treadmill may be unusual, but this time it’s one prompted more by the need for a well-earned break than the four months’ absenteeism provoked by less-benign reasons almost six years ago. Periodical private reviews of my most recent publication during occasional stints in the Armitage-Shanks cubbyhole have helped to remind me that this here Winegum serves a purpose of sorts, so I was keen to return to the fold once the holiday season was over. And, in my current absence, what has changed? Well, missing out on a routine obituary – in this case for Terry Venables – was a minor compromise, but as for the wider world, it appears my vacation didn’t miss much in the way of progress. The Israel-Palestine thing is ongoing, but what’s new? That’s been ongoing for the best part of 75 years, give or take the odd intermission. The blind eyes turned to the true intentions of Hamas are equally nothing new where the so-called ‘liberal’ intelligentsia are concerned, so there wasn’t much I could really add to that particular conflict when spending my evenings overdosing on After-Eight mints at the radically-early hour of 7.00pm; yes, things really were that decadent.
Bloody Sunday, Levinson, Grenfell – the list of long drawn-out public inquiries over the past decade or so may have superficially fulfilled demands for answers simply by being held, though most appear to have raised buck-passing to a virtual art form; it would seem the pandemic is now receiving the same treatment, with an agenda swiftly becoming apparent on the part of the prosecutors. Another star turn from Dominic ‘f**king’ Cummings has grabbed the majority of the headlines this last week, with a MSM that summarily failed to seriously grill the Government over its policies at the time predictably getting excited at below-stairs gossip concerning Boris and his entourage. However, by focusing on the trivial and bypassing the big issue, Fleet Street and the broadcasters are merely continuing a spineless, supine trend they established during the pandemic, when not one journalist dare speak out and challenge the logic of lockdown at those televised daily briefings – probably mindful they risked their future prospects of becoming Downing Street press officer should they do so.
On a purely personal level, the timing of this inquiry and the headlines it has managed to wrestle away from Gaza – however rooted in trivialities they may be – is quite canny when it comes to promoting a new publication. Titled 
Whenever I take a week off from this here Winegum, whether due to an actual physical vacation, general headline fatigue, or a pile-up of other creative commitments, the hope is always that no major news story breaks that I’d ordinarily respond to. As it happens, I’ve just returned from a sort-of holiday bereft of the tools of my trade, so wasn’t in a position to post anything anyway. However, that didn’t prevent me jotting sentences down on a notepad whenever they gatecrashed my thoughts, for I had a feeling they’d form some sort of post once I was back home again. And, remarkably, I survived what used to simply be regarded as warm weather of the kind summers actually tend to specialise in. Remarkable indeed – and even more remarkable was the fact it rained once or twice after a dry spell; again, this is the sort of thing we’d never heard of before climate change became a corporate bandwagon on a par with Pride. I honestly don’t know how we coped before the powers-that-be alerted us to all this shit.
Anyway, whilst the passing of a famous name I had a soft spot for can often come to my rescue if I’m struggling to think of something to write about, the worst thing is if such a name should pass away in my absence. It happened twice during my latest stint AWOL, and I figured I may as well give the two an honourable mention now I have the chance. Glenda Jackson, whose death at the age of 87 was announced at the back end of last week, was an actress who made her mark at a moment when British cinema was benefitting from ‘England swinging’ via handsome injections of cash from Hollywood. She established herself in groundbreaking Brit flicks such as ‘Women in Love’, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘The Music Lovers’, and then seamlessly transferred to the small screen when bringing some cinematic gravitas to her portrayal of the Virgin Queen in the BBC’s landmark 1971 production, ‘Elizabeth R’; television was also responsible for the unveiling of her hitherto-untapped comic timing, which she showcased alongside Eric and Ernie. She then exported this to the big screen, winning an Oscar for the 1973 Rom Com, ‘A Touch of Class’.
The other notable passing in my absence was that of a Scottish colossus of 70s soccer, Gordon McQueen, whose death at the age of 70 from an apparent combination of cancer and dementia was also announced last week. Central defender McQueen began his career at St Mirren before joining a well-established exodus south of the border to Don Revie’s mighty Leeds United in the early 70s. Earmarked as a replacement for the ageing Jack Charlton, McQueen was part of an awesome line-up of combative Scots at Elland Road, including seven first-team regulars. He was crucial to Leeds’ 1974 title-winning side and played a vital role in the following season’s European Cup run under Revie’s ‘proper’ successor Jimmy Armfield, only missing out on the Final due to being sent-off in the Semi after performing a move from the Johnny Giles manual of self-defence against a niggling Barcelona forward. McQueen formed a close bond with fellow Leeds scot Joe Jordan and controversially accompanied Jordan across the Pennines in 1978 to Manchester Utd, with whom he won the FA Cup in 1983. McQueen also had many a memorable moment in international colours, especially his goal against the Auld Enemy at Wembley in 1977 (prior to an infamous pitch invasion). Mc Queen had carried on a tradition instigated by Jack Charlton at Leeds, dashing up from the centre of defence during a corner and hanging around the goal-line before utilising his height to leap up and head the ball down into the back of the net. Sadly, it was the legacy of this tactic to which his dementia was attributed in later life. Hard balls headed by hard men in a harder footballing age; a pity the personal price was so high for such a towering giant of his era.
It tends to be a given that most works of fiction which imagine the future usually offer an exaggerated vision of the times in which they were written, reflecting the hopes and – more often than not – the fears of the here and now. Numerous elements of a book such as ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ become more worryingly prescient the further we travel from the Cold War nursery that inspired it, though its source material is still unmistakably 1940s Europe. Equally, whilst Anthony Burgess ingeniously kept ‘A Clockwork Orange’ relevant for each generation of teenage hoodlums by inventing slang for his gang of Droogs, their actual genesis was in the moral panic that accompanied Britain’s original adolescent bogeyman, the Teddy Boy. Trying to second-guess what will happen next involves observing the most concerning present day developments and projecting them forwards, imagining how their progress will continue along a similar path, morphing into even more horrific manifestations of their contemporary incarnation. I guess today there are several schools of thought that maintain this tradition, depending upon where one stands on the pressing issues.
Next year’s Eurovision being staged in Blighty by default isn’t necessarily a unique event; the tradition of one year’s winning nation hosting the following year’s Contest has been disrupted several times in the past, and the UK has stepped in to host proceedings as a substitute more than once, usually when the winning nation has found staging the contest an impossibility, the last time (until 2023) being 1974. Luxembourg had claimed the crown in 1973, but the Grand Duchy’s second consecutive win proved to be a financial bridge too far for the principality and Britain stepped in again, nominating the Brighton Dome as a venue. Of course, a certain four-piece from Sweden eventually captured the headlines with a stomping slice of sub-Glam Rock called ‘Waterloo’, and every other performance that year tends to linger in Abba’s shadow, despite the 1974 Eurovision producing a record number of UK hits. Aside from the celebrated chart-topping winner, the runner-up – Italy’s Gigliola Cinquetti with ‘Si’ – reached No.8; Holland’s third-placed entry, ‘I See a Star’ by Mouth & MacNeal, peaked at the same position; and the UK’s very own ‘Long Live Love’ made the charts at No.11; the singer of that song was Olivia Newton-John.
David Warner, Bernard Cribbins, Nichelle Nichols – they’re dropping like flies again; and in tandem with the passing of familiar famous faces whose finest performances evoke inevitable nostalgia, a purely unrelated excursion on my part has involved delving into a retro-scented environment as redolent of a disappearing world as those dearly departed characters were. Over the past month, I’ve followed a route carved-out by navvies more than 200 years ago and ended up at a landmark George Orwell immortalised in 1937, despite the fact even he arrived too late to catch the decrepit remnants of an old music-hall gag. A lengthy post-war restoration of our man-made waterways has perhaps neutered their industrial origins, yet a wooden jetty erected to assist the loading of coal onto working barges was labelled a pier as an ironic dig at a town sorely lacking in the gaudy glamour that the coastal escape routes offered the colliers whose booty the vanished edifice was once weighed down by. The fact a functional construction was jokingly compared to a seaside stalwart highlights how the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, upon which the actual Wigan Pier stood, was very much a workplace for the majority of its existence, something it’s easy to forget when one strolls beside it today.
‘Oh, I’m looking after my girlfriend’s dog again while she’s at work’; ‘I think that cat lives next-door and it keeps coming in every time I leave the backdoor open’ – just two of the excuses I routinely used when I had both a canine and feline companion when living in rented accommodation and the owner of the property turned up unannounced. Keeping quiet about one’s benefits was one thing – ‘No DHSS’ was something landlords were allowed to state in the same way they’d once infamously stated ‘No Irish, no dogs, no blacks’ – but pets were the ultimate no-no. That said, I lived in three different premises with my cat and dog and wasn’t officially entitled to have either of them whilst living there. Some landlords were more tolerant than others. A landlady I had over 20 years ago insisted on collecting the rent in person and would call every Thursday evening at the same time; but she didn’t just take the money at the door; she’d come in, sit down and natter. Throughout this weekly endurance test I’d have to make sure the cat was out and I’d ask a friend to sit in the kitchen with the dog, bribing him with treats to prevent him from barking.
‘I pms at these,’ is not perhaps a statement that will be forever enshrined in the annals of great quotes. The person who said it went by the name of shazza, whoever shazza may be. But shazza is nevertheless a notable figure to me, for his/her comment was the last to ever grace a video on my YouTube channel, the final person provoked into saying something after enjoying one of my offerings on a platform that had twelve long years of providing satirical and/or bawdy entertainment for the masses who were incapable of raising even a moderate titter at the woeful excuse for comedy that television serves-up these days. Unfortunately, the history that shazza made with this brief comment on the most recent instalment of ‘Buggernation Street’ is a history that has been erased from the books, for Sillycunt Valley’s very own Ministry of Truth has excised yours truly from the platform as of late Wednesday evening. I’m not playing the victim here, btw; I just figured you might find this story interesting.
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