A dog day’s night

The Labour Party is having a pretty rough (or ‘ruff’, as the case may be) time of it at the moment. The very public leadership battle rumbles on with seemingly no end in sight and the national press is having an absolute field day painting the party as everything from anti-Semitic (seriously, Ken Livingstone, what’s the deal with all the public remarks about Hitler?) to anti-Women and, basically, entirely unelectable.

Yet, Labour won a great victory yesterday and one that this column feels is worthy of a mention. It was a tough battle, with plenty of canvassing for votes and a lot of cross-party politicking. The whole thing it seems got very hot under the collar.

Yesterday was the 24th annual Westminster Dog of the Year competition – organised by the Dogs Trust and the Kennel Club – and the winners were a pair of handsome Labradoodles belonging to none other than Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, Johnathan Reynolds.

Now this column likes to think it can turn a phrase and has a fairly large arsenal of pooch-puns on hand when the situation requires it. Yet, Diary is going to give the floor to Mr Reynolds on this because, quite frankly, he’s gone completely off the leash here.

“I am delighted to have won Westminster Dog of the Year with my terrific pooches Clinton and Kennedy,” he said, before continuing: “They’ve had such a fantastic day, meeting all the other paw-litical candidates and I was never in any doubt that they would wag their way to victory."

Paw-litical… Diary would never have thought to even go there. Life’s a bitch, so they say.

The Times – taking a very brief break from relentlessly hounding the National Trust over its temerity to purchase some land, relocate some sheep and mildly inconvenience two village football teams – also bounded into the show, with a pedigree analysis.

“The honourable member for Lichfield was down on all fours, panting, his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth. Just an average Thursday morning in Westminster.

"Except that for once there was a good reason for Michael Fabricant to be prostrate outside the House of Lords: he was posing with his entry for the Westminster Dog of the Year.”

Gives one paws for thought that sentence. As in, what is the point of democracy, really, when our elected officials are doing this kind of thing? In the dog house, all of you!

Seagal in the ‘Stans

B-grade action movie hero, martial arts enthusiast, reality television star and sunglass aficionado Steven Seagal has bizarrely re-emerged into popular culture again.

No, it’s not because of a new film or project, but because he’s been travelling through a number of post-Soviet republics – all your favourite ‘Stans: Kazak, Kyrgyz… the other ones – promoting “world peace”.

Seagal was on hand last week to open the World Nomad Games, trotting across Kyrgyzstan’s national stadium on a war pony, clad in medieval armour and matching goatee. He also met with Kyrgyzstan’s president Almazbek Atambayev and played acoustic guitar at a “charity dinner” in the capital of Bishkek, where “tickets sold for $1,000 per head”.

There’s no word what this charity dinner was in aid of, but Diary wishes it was there.

Seagal has said that his bizarre, central-Asian sojourn is all in the interests of bridging the gap towards “world peace” and has said he plans on shooting films in the region in the future. Indeed, he put out an open call for local “tough men, fighters, people who can do stunts on horses and beautiful women” to star in said films.

Best of luck with that, Steve.

By hook or by crook

Finally, the Canal & River Trust has been making a number of very helpful videos for would be fishermen and women about the least damaging ways of fishing on the UK’s beautiful natural waterways.

Video 5 for example shows anglers “how to safely unhook your fish” and other important fishing tips, including (but not limited to) “how to use a disgorger”. That sounds painful for all concerned.

Teach a man to fish, and all that...