Once more across the transatlantic divide, my friends… I’m not sure televised sheepdog trials would ever be likely to become a hit in the United States. This, then, is another difference between the old and new worlds.
So it is sad to record the end of an era: Phil Drabble, the long-time presenter of One Man And His Dog has died. As always, we turn to The Daily Telegraph’s obituary to lament – and yet be entertained by – the passing of another (albeit minor) British institution:
Phil Drabble, who died on Sunday aged 93, came to fame presenting BBC2’s sheepdog trials programme One Man and His Dog, a series based upon the guaranteed stupidity of sheep. If ever a voice were built for sheepdog trials it was Drabble’s, once described as “soft as country rain, as right for the world of five-bar gates and grass-chewing as John Arlott’s was for cricket”.
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