Co-conspirators may remember when Dominic Cummings was giving select committee evidence, when he came out with the farcical anecdote of the day Covid planning was derailed on March 12 2020 by both Trump’s bombing raid and Carrie distracting the press office after a Times story about Dilyn the dog. The article in question claimed Boris and Carrie were thinking about giving up Dilyn because the dog’s housetraining was not going well. It even prompted Carrie to tweet “What a load of total crap!”, and The Times deleted the piece from their website…

While Carrie undoubtedly loves their rescue hound, subsequent anecdotes published over the last year suggest Boris still doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with the mutt.

In February 2021 it was reported he yelled out “someone shoot that f**king dog” after Dilyn wrecked antique furniture at Chequers, chewing antiques, stealing expensive books and weeing on carpets.

Two weeks ago at a garden party of Tory MPs, Dilyn caused such havoc – including disturbing a duck that promptly did its business on one of the PM’s backbenchers – that the PM publicly declared “Take the dog to a place of execution”. The Times chalked it up as a joke…

On Saturday night we got yet another Dilyn-damning anecdote from the Sunday Times. This time they report that due to the dog’s inability to shut up while the PM’s top team pored over the Sue Gray report on Wednesday morning, the PM once again yelled out “Will someone put that dog down!”

“One of those present suggested that his military adviser, a former special forces commando, could dispatch Dilyn “with his bare hands”.

All of this is without mentioning the SW1 rumour that Dilyn once took a dump in a cabinet minister’s handbag. We’ve asked Downing Street to deny that the PM wants to see Dilyn join the choir invisible – a response has not been forthcoming – we’ll keep hounding the press office…