This article is taken from the June 2021 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issue for just £10.

Bozzo is feeding me again! Last year, when Cazza put Bozzo on the Horrid Diet, he stopped leaving takeaway boxes around for me to lick. For a while, we played a game where he hid snacks in cupboards for me to find, but then Cazza took away something called Deliveroo Password. 

Now he has a new food for me: little bits of paper with numbers on. They don’t taste as good as curry. Perhaps they’re a kind of medicine. I hope they’re not like the Bad Medicine that Caino tried to give me. 

“Come on, Filthy Mutt,” Bozzo says, using his special name for me. “If you can eat four grand’s worth of first edition Trollope, you can eat these receipts. See if Clever Case can find them after that, eh?” 

Bozzo has been happy lately. He keeps asking people to find places for him on maps and then muttering: “Sixteen percent swing, eh? Take that, Smarmer!” He was so pleased that he didn’t even complain when I did a Dom in the passage, and he couldn’t find anyone to clean it up.

So now he’s feeding me the little bits of paper, and muttering to himself about hugging. “Might see if that brunette in the garden room fancies a bit of caution and restraint,” he says. “Time for an overnight trip to Scotland, I think, to secure the precious union.”

Just then, Cazza comes in. “What are you doing now, fatso?” she says (she has lots of special names for him). 

“Oh hi!”Bozzo says, quickly putting his phone away. “You know, destroying the evidence, like you said.”

“I told you to burn it, Muppet-head, not give it to Dillers. You know what paper does to his tummy. Remember last year when he ate the only copy of your plan to fix social care?”

“Yes, but Govester says I’m not allowed to use the fireplace. Environmental something. Actually, he was jolly helpful. Said he could take all the documents and make sure they were safe.”

“What?”

“Oh no, wait, I wasn’t supposed to tell you. He said you wouldn’t like that.”

No Cazza, don’t throw the books at Bozzo! Throw them for Dilyn!

As told to Robert Hutton