Shocking news that Michael Heseltine strangled a family dog that nipped him. In an interview in Tatler the Tory grandee admits that he strangled his mother’s pet Alsatian, Kim.

‘I went to stroke him and he started biting me… If you have a dog that turns, you just cannot risk it. So I took Kim’s collar – a short of choker chain – and pulled it tight. Suddenly he went limp. I was devoted to Kim, but he’d obviously had some sort of mental breakdown.’ 

Guido has two terriers, seen below in their Halloween finery. Once or twice the children when teasing them with a ball or a tit-bit have got them over-excited. In the consequent melee a dog has nipped them, perhaps accidentally. Guido shouts at them, spanks the dog and tells them to go to their bed (sometimes the children too). The dogs slink off with their ears pinned back and sit slumped in their beds. Strangling seems a bit much unless the dog turned vicious…

In response to the news of the Heseltine dog strangling the RSPCA tells the Daily Mail ‘We are considering our response.’ Now if it were a fox…

UPDATE: Hezza hits back, insisting he didn’t actually kill the dog.