One of the disadvantages of being brought up in SW London in the ‘60s and ‘70s was that none of the parks or ponds encouraged the local animals to help out the Police.

If there’d been an Outback within Tooting Bec Common, a Cockney Skippy could have helped identify villains.  Local Police could have been trained to speak Kangaroo.  “What’s that, Skippy, someone’s selling eggs past their sell-by date in Tooting Market?”

If Clapham Common Ponds would have been at the same temperature as the waters off the coast of Florida, Flipper could have made a second home there and have been a massive assistance to the constabulary operating out of the Cavendish Road Police Station.

However, my question is this: Why did the law enforcers, who, in Dr Doolittle vain, speak to the animals, always assuming there was a problem?  Was there not the outside possibility that both Skippy and Flipper, having befriended the local Bobbies, were simply trying to exchange pleasantries? 

I can imagine both Skippy and Flipper chirruping and squeaking away wondering, why do these people think a lifeboat’s adrift, or a body’s been found on Ayers’s Rock? All I want to know if they think it looks like rain?

I’ve always wanted to talk to dolphins and went to evening class to do so.  In the first lesson, I learned to count to ten in Dolphin; ordered two beers and mastered saying “you have the right to remain silent”.

Dingo took your baby?  Sorry, Skippy, that’s another series.