Long life | 11 October 2012

In one of those futile bits of research on which academics waste time and money in the pathetic hope of getting mentioned in the press, Hiroshima University in Japan claims to have discovered that people work harder if they have a picture of a pet on their desk. This finding was considered so interesting by the Daily Telegraph that it reported it on its front page with the advice that ‘looking at pictures of puppies and kittens could improve your concentration by a tenth’.

I wouldn’t have thought many people had photographs of pets on their desks, and I certainly don’t. But I do have the real thing sitting on a chair beside me, and she isn’t improving my concentration one bit. I refer to my Jack Russell, Polly, who is actually preventing me from concentrating by urging me (by whining, twitching her tail, and pricking up her ears) to take her out for a walk.