Monday, 27 December 2021 | 4.6°C Dublin
Welcome to Pet Island, let off the leash for the first time on RTE 1 this evening, a place where just about everybody in sight is barking mad. Except for the dogs.
T he dogs on Pet Island don't bark at all, madly or otherwise. Or if they do, it happens when the cameras aren't rolling. Like children in Victorian times - at least those that weren't clambering up the chimneys to earn a crust - they're intended to be seen and not heard.
There are cats too and one of them, a hairless one named Snow White with more creases on its forehead than Gordon Ramsay, does actually maiow. Just the once. I don't speak fluent cat and therefore can't offer a competent translation.
But if I had to guess, I'd say it's most likely a cry for help: a pathethic, heartbreaking plea to be released from the indignities the poor blameless creature is enduring, such as being washed in a bath of bubbly water while a television audience watches and then made to wear a chunky yellow sweater.
Her owner says Snow White and her other cats can be hard on sweaters, sometimes wrecking them in a matter of days. "They groom the sweaters like they would groom themselves," she adds.
Indeed. That's why most people don't make their cats wear sweaters. The people on Pet Island, however, which is narrated by Pauline McLynn, who I hope read the pay cheque before she read the script, aren't like most people. They're a unique breed, less homo sapiens, and more homo sapheads.
They, rather than their pets, are under the microscope here, and its lens lingers most probingly on Martin Bailey and his fiancee Jennifer Duggan, aka "Ireland's most glamorous pet owners".
Martin - who, with his vertigo-inducing hairstyle, strange eyebrows and black jacket with shiny gold buttons and embroidered cuffs, looks as if he spends a lot of time in grooming parlours himself - and Jennifer, a former Miss Ireland contestant, own an Old English Sheepdog and five Maltese, which are the living, breathing, pissing-against-the-lamp-post definition of pampered pooches.
When Martin, Jennifer and the gang are strutting along the streets of their Kildare suburb, a couple of show ponies in charge of a bunch of show dogs, they invariably attract attention, which Jennifer says makes them feel like movie stars.
She doesn't like children putting their mitts on hermutts, though. "Kids always have, like dirty hands," she says scornfully.
The Maltese, two of which are called Mimi and New York, have their own exclusive wardrobes, including tiny pink dresses, fur coats, leather jackets, jeans, hoodies and a collar of pearls from Newbridge Silverware. When all dolled up, they make Zivile's sweater-wearing moggies look like scobies.
"They have a coat for every occasion," Jennifer trills. "Mimi, especially, when she sees her dresses, knows we are going day-day." If not going gaga.
Alas, the only coat poor New York was allowed to wear in the All-Ireland Dog Show was the one she was born with. She came second in her class.
Elsewhere on Pet Island, four women are testing out a contraption designed to train cast to use the toilet instead of a littler tray.
"If I can get them to use this I can put in a sensor flush system and they'll be completely independent," says one.
After which, every animal lover watching will be fervently hoping, the cast will hire a good lawyer and sue their owners.
Here's a taster of Pet Island, kicking off on RTE at 7pm Thursdays:
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