Mad About The Dog

Nigel, the golden retriever, is the star of Gardeners’ World, while Frances Wilson is in thrall to her poodle, Daphne. Meanwhile, there’s a new slew of canine biographies, in line with a grand British tradition.

We all know Nigel. He’s that good-natured blonde chap who presents Gardeners’ World along with his partner, Monty Don. While Nigel hovers around looking manly, flashing his smile and posing for the camera, Monty, underdog that he is, puts in the graft. Nigel has a Twitter account, a Wikipedia entry and a fanbase of thousands. Every week the postman brings him sackfuls of packages, mostly from adoring women. What is the secret of his success? Monty Don puts it down to natural charisma. ‘The nearest comparison to Nigel I can make’, says Don, ‘is President Bill Clinton’.

The comparison is startling, not because Nigel is a golden retriever but because Clinton is American. There has never been a more solid English Tory than Nige, with his love of tradition, afternoon naps, muddy wellies and damp ball games. Nigel’s type has passed through our minor public schools for generations; not that he would have been, Don concedes, ‘a scholarship boy’. His charm is precisely his absence of intellect; Nigel radiates instead ‘a kind of existential innocence based upon acombination of absolute trust and limited brainpower’. Gromit to Monty Don’s Wallace, Nigel is one of us , a reliable ‘good egg’ who can, as a parlour trick, balance a bone on his nose. And, unlike Clinton, he would never cheat on his wife.