The conservative commentator Charles Moore was appearing on a televised version of Radio 4’s Today programme.
He had arrived in the studio with his pet dog, a fluffy little white terrier of some sort. This dog had, he said, learned how to speak.
The presenter, John Humphrys, then turned to the dog and asked it to take the listeners through its daily routine.
Quite to my surprise, the dog started talking in very good English. He spoke with a slight drawl, almost as though yawning, but he was precise and easy to understand.
Never in my life had I witnessed anything quite so astonishing as this talking dog. But other Radio 4 listeners seemed to take it in their stride
Sadly, I don’t remember the fine details of the dog’s daily routine, though it involved, as you might expect, a number of meals and walks.
But I remember his closing sentence exactly: ‘And then I like to end each day with a glass of Campari.’
Never in my life had I witnessed anything quite so astonishing as this talking dog. But other Radio 4 listeners seemed to take it in their stride.
Many of them phoned in. Far from expressing amazement that a dog could speak English so fluently, they were outraged that Charles Moore let his dog drink Campari.
It was, as you may have guessed, all a dream, but a dream so vivid that, days later, I still find myself irritated by the priggish reaction of those Radio 4 listeners.
This was, after all, a talking dog! Where was their capacity for wonder? And what’s so wrong with a well educated dog enjoying the occasional glass of Campari?
A survey by the Sleep Council suggests that a third of us have experienced particularly vivid dreams during lockdown.
Many report having dreams revolving around anxiety: shelves in supermarkets are empty, toilets and drains are blocked, and so on.
This was, after all, a talking dog! Where was their capacity for wonder? And what’s so wrong with a well educated dog enjoying the occasional glass of Campari?
‘Part of the brain’s function during sleep is to process emotions, including dealing with threat,’ says Colin Espie, professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford.
‘Our dreams are a window into the way we are feeling.’
This interpretation is borne out by Samuel Pepys’ diaries. Before the Great Fire of London, Pepys tended to have amorous dreams.
On August 15, 1665, he enjoyed one of ‘the best that ever was dreamt, which was that I had my Lady Castlemayne in my armes and was admitted to use all the dalliance I desired with her’.
But on September 15, 1666, ten days or so after the fire, Pepys reports being ‘much terrified in the nights now-a-days with dreams of fire, and falling down of houses’.
Spookily, some of the most notable dreams have foretold real events. One of the eeriest was a dream President Abraham Lincoln reported to his wife, one evening in 1865, after she noticed he was upset about something.
He had, he told her, dreamed of hearing sobbing in the White House, ‘people… grieving as if their hearts would break’.
In an attempt to trace the source of this sobbing, he had gone to the East Room, where he found soldiers surrounding a corpse, with bystanders pitifully weeping.
‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was his answer. ‘He was killed by an assassin.’
Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream.’ A few days later, President Lincoln was shot and killed by an assassin attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington.
Oddly enough, Spencer Perceval, the British prime minister from 1809 to 1812, also had a dream of being shot in the lobby of the House of Commons by a man in a green coat with brass buttons.
The next morning Perceval told his family about his nightmare, but, despite their warnings, went to work as usual.
Sure enough, he was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by a man in a green coat with brass buttons.
You may say that a dream about a dog talking and drinking Campari could never be predic tive.
But these are strange times, and pandemics often give rise to unexpected side-effects. What if every dog in the land were to start reaching for the Campari and chatting away in fluent English?
What if all those pet dogs, from slobbery labradors to yappy pekingeses, began spreading malicious gossip about their owners, fuelled by alcohol?
The world would be faced with a problem of shattering proportions. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.