Beware your 15 minutes of fame.

Everybody on the planet, (well over 3 million of us) it seems, has seen or at least heard on YouTube, the hapless owner of Fenton, blaspheming in the name of pooch control. Fenton the wilful black labrador, who has entertained by running amok in amongst the deer in Richmond Park, has fallen foul of the Nanny State. Or rather the luckless owner, Mr Max Finlay has. One minute he is reluctantly the lead topic of the global conversation, with Fenton ringtones and T-shirts springing up in time for Christmas; the next minute ‘the Old Bill’ are knocking at his door.
The humourless officers of the Royal Parks Police, have decided to ‘investigate’ whether “park regulations have been breached.”
Perhaps it was not enough that this unfortunate but nevertheless amusing incident, propelled Mr Finlay to heights of notoriety his work as an ‘Editorial Consultant’ have never reached – or is the depths of embarrassment that are prompting him to even consider changing the dog’s name?
Because like it or not Fenton and Max Finlay are now public property.
I now know that Mr Finlay is aged 60, a married father-of-two and lives comfortably in  a smart £600,000 terraced house in nearby Southfields’.
I also have no doubt that, his company Max Findlay Associates, is fending off endorsement advances of Purina and IAMS even as I write.
Fenton (I have an Uncle Fenton Padbury somewhere) is now tipped to be the Boys name of choice for 2012, outstripping even the prolific Mohammeds, and sales of well-disciplined Black Labs are set to rise even higher.
Meanwhile the General Synod, not to be outdone by the hectoring Police, are considering commencing ex-communication proceedings, if not a public stake-burning of poor MR F.
Children, wish not for fame, only fortune, it will probably prove less embarrassing.

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