Gus Dermody speaking on 'One Man and his Dog'

     Today, we had a remarkable talk from Gus Dermody called One Man and His Dog . 

    This was a very interesting and entertaining talk based around his biography with numerous anecdotes and amusing incidents.  It gave some insight into the issues and programme production within the BBC.  His early life was as a traffic policemen, based on his second love of motor-cycles . He could not pursue his first love of dogs as he needed to be married since a police dog was kept at the handler's home.  After he married, he trained as a dog handler, and went unpaid to shows and made demonstrations of sheep dog handling.

    After retirement from the Police, he set-up sheep dog handling as a travelling show, comprising his own dog, plus a flock of ducks and sheep. An amusing story about how he managed to operate a demised duck as puppet had us in stiches.  Apparently his dog had thrown the duck up in the air after he disturbed the duck so that it jumped out of its pen.

    He then trained as a scanner for cattle pregnancy testing.  We were regaled with amusing stories including the canny farmer who was quoted a time based rate of £10 per 15 minutes, after the famer had previously kept him on site all the afternoon for a fixed fee per test.  This time the famer had everything set-up and the 6 tests were done in 10 minutes, so Gus only received £10, as he had omitted the minimum charge of £20 for a visit !  Then there was the man-eating corgi, but that is another story for another day.

    Gus was later requested to become involved in a television series featuring sheepdog trials.  It was initially presented by Phil Drabble, with commentary by Eric Halsall and, later, by Ray Ollerenshaw.  Robin Page then replaced Drabble as the main presenter and Gus Dermody took over as commentator. At its peak, it attracted audiences in excess of eight million. Gus has remained the commentator ever since. The main hosts have been Clarissa Dickson Wright, followed by Ben Fogle with co-host Shauna Lowry, and Kate Humble. Matt Baker joined the programme as a co-commentator (alongside Dermody) and became the main host. In 2012 Baker was joined as a main presenter by Michaela Strachan.  Gus gave us interesting some insights into the personalities of some of these people.

    In one of the last shows, it was decided to go live, and Gus struggled to have the animals (dogs, sheep, etc) trained to meet fixed time frames.  We could well image the impossibility of instructing the animals exactly where to go and when. He was also encumbered with twin headphones squirting instructions while he was live on air, three people in one ear, and one in the other.  He found the off switch...

    Gus is now retired and clearly enjoying giving talks to very receptive audiences.

    Altogether Gus made the whole talk very light hearted and entertaining, and we suggested that he return at an early date to give us more in the same vain.

  Roger Brookes